Lemons
Friday 17 February 2023
Smile, Sourly?
Hope Contagiously!
Psalms 104:24
O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
Revelation 4:11
You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.
Words of Grace For Today
Henri sat chewing on a blade of grass, wondering how his garden project had come to such a terrible juncture. It cost him six times or more what just going to the farmer’s market would have cost him, and then double that with the hail destroying half his crop. And what was he going to do with all the produce anyway, even the half that would still be harvested.
Mein Gott, Mein Gott, he thought!
Which brought him to wonder if God, the creator of the universe and all the creatures on earth felt the same way after humans made such a mess out of it all!
Except God probably knew what would become of humans! And God, of course, planned for that, too! So why did God let Henri make such a colossal mistake when he was just trying to do the right thing?
He remembered hearing that God most delighted when bent, perverted, and lost souls finally confessed, repented, and allowed the Holy Spirit to renew life in them.
Kind of like making lemon-aide out of lemons, only on a universal scale! To which Henri thought, ya, not just throughout the universe, but for all people!
So how to make ‘lemon-aide’ out of his garden project gone amuck?!
He just could not spend more money on the project, and this summer was pretty much set. His mind swam aimlessly finding no ‘lemon aide’, just ‘lemons upon lemons’ all the way down, and all the way back up.
So he called Francine. She was beyond busy she said, but she offered to get back to him the following week. Then she threw out as a good-bye, ‘why not take on all the people who didn’t get a garden with her? I’ll send you the list.’ click.
And there it was: it clicked. Involve more people. That was the answer, but Henri really loved his peace and quiet and solitude. He thought that maybe it was time to sacrifice a bit of that to help others. So he, procrastinated, ruminated, and waited a whole 2 days before he started calling and …
At the end of the week, more than a few people had shown up and claimed a portion of the garden as theirs to care for and to harvest, and share with Henri.
Henri said he already had enough coming in from the student workers for himself, so they all agreed that the food bank would see great donations of fresh and preserved produce, and even some people offered to make dishes for the food bank to distribute.
Henri thought: “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. You are worthy to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created. … Even ‘lemons’.