When Life Gives You Lemons

You’ve all heard this classic phrase: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Usually, when I think of this phrase, I think of embracing whatever life brings your way. Make the most of every opportunity. Take something sour and turn it into something sweet. Of course, I think all of those things resonate with me right now, but I also think this phrase has taken on a new meaning for me today. Let’s dive into this together.

When life “gives you lemons,” I immediately think of how sour lemons are. It’s kind of gross to eat a lemon by itself. Even babies know this. Think of those viral YouTube videos of parents feeding their children lemons for the first time. Their reactions are usually priceless, but more often than not, I see those videos highlighting how caught off guard these kids can be. They’re expecting something tasty, and in turn, they get something kind of unsettling. They’re expecting their parents to give them something they’d like, and they end up tasting something that’s the opposite.

This brings up a whole can of worms about whether or not my Heavenly Father, God, ever does stuff like this. The Scripture that combats this more tricky thought for me immediately comes to mind: “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” - Matthew 7:11.

My first instinct is to reject immediately the idea that I’m evil. Jesus said this though, and it’s wore considering. He’s not a lunatic or a liar; He is the Lord. I think what he’s saying here is that I’m a human being, thus imperfect, and with the propensity for evil thoughts, words, and deeds. I’m not holy. I’m not good on my own accord. Apart from Jesus and his goodness, I am not good. I cannot be perfectly good. I’m not good, but evil.

However, what I love here is that Jesus speaks on behalf of his Father, and says that even though I’m not good, I know how to give good gifts. That’s pretty remarkable. So then, when he says that God gives good gifts, it’s all the more amazing and incredible because He is actually good. Where I fall short, God never does. And with that in mind, considering He is never evil, does no evil, and will never move out of a place of evil, how much more incredible are His gifts to us!

I wasn’t expecting this blog post to turn into a theological or philosophical post. But alas, here we are. Let’s sit with the idea that God gives us good gifts. He isn’t the kind of parent that catches us off guard with something we think will taste good and then doesn’t. That’s twisted and pretty unsettling. Yes, he allows suffering in our lives. But I can’t imagine that my good, good Father would ever move out of a place of malice or manipulation. He doesn’t want to catch me off guard in a way that destroys me. He actually wants my good, and even if His gifts hurt, they’re never given out of a place of evil intent. And even if they hurt, sometimes the truth does hurt. But it’s the kind of thing that He does for us, not against us. When God chooses to reveal something difficult to us, I can only imagine Him doing that because He’s moving out of a place of pure love. That is even a gift to us, that the things that hurt us with good in mind, are the things that remind of us a God who really loves us. He doesn’t hate us. He loves us. And thus, he really does give good gifts.

I’m arguing, then, that lemons are those things in life that are thrown our way that are not welcomed or wanted. They are not gifts from God. They, in and of themselves, might be darts from the enemy. They might be placed in our path to strike us down. They’re the things that don’t feel like good gifts. The things that are genuinely sour and aren’t easy to digest. Given to us from a place of not being for our good. Thus, when life - or loved ones, or strangers, or even enemies - throw me lemons, I don’t think my posture is to digest those things at face value and become burdened or struck down by them. I think this whole idea of creating lemonade out of lemons is very much about my reaction and response to those unsettling things. Those things are not good gifts. However, I can choose to respond to those things with an even greater and more powerful force: gratitude, love, perseverance, joy.

Thus, here’s where the lemonade comes in. A lemon is sour. Lemonade is sweet. You usually taste remnants of the sourness of lemons in lemonade, of course, but there are so many other ingredients added to the drink that make it taste good. Without the concoction of sweet and sour things coming together, the lemonade wouldn’t taste sweet. It wouldn’t be something that’s actually good and worth digesting.

So then, I like to think that my response of gratitude, love, perseverance, and joy are those sweet things that make the lemons endurable. I can take them at face value and not digest them that way. I can add my sweet things to the mix, and come out stronger on the other side. Able to reconcile the hurt I might feel because of them, capable of taking what others intend for evil, and turning it around for good.

Somehow, because of this, I like to think that God is in this mix. When life gives us lemons, God can take those gross things and make them good. God can even give me the propensity for gratitude and love when I’m down and out, because of those lemons. And I like to think that God already understands this entirely. God can take the worst evil in history - the death of His Son, Jesus - and turn that for the greatest good - His Resurrection from the dead! I really believe God is a God that takes the grossest things and redeems them. He can take even the worst situation or circumstance or person or system or family unit or relationship and make it good. That’s what He does. He’s only and always in the business of redeeming the world He created, to make it good again (and more so than before evil came about).

“What man meant for evil, God intends for good.” So, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.