Day 6
Ever heard the expression, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade?” Maybe you’ve lost a job, but instead of viewing it as complete rejection and certain disaster, you use the opportunity to reconsider your career path and try something new, even go back to school and start over. Or maybe your “plans” to be married and have two kids by age 30 haven’t materialized. You’re now a 35-year-old with no good prospects in sight, but instead of settling for a relationship that is less than stellar, you ask God to reveal His plan for your life. Lemons to lemonade, right? It’s easier said than done!
This proverb “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” isn’t as old as you might think. It is understood to have been coined by the American writer Elbert Hubbard in the 1915 obituary he wrote of Marshall Pinckney Wilder, known as “The King of Jesters.” Wilder was one of the most successful vaudeville performers of his time and a favorite of the British royal family. Hubbard wrote that the actor achieved greatness despite the challenges of being born with dwarfism: “He picked up the lemons that fate had sent him and started a lemonade stand.” Later in the 1940s, inspirational speaker Dale Carnegie popularized the phrase in his book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, and urged his readers to embrace optimism and resilience to turn challenges, hardships or misfortunes - the lemons - into something positive, productive or valuable - lemonade.
In today’s reading we join Jesus and His friends at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. His mother Mary is also there and learns of a problem, a huge basket of lemons, that no amount of positive thinking will turn into lemonade! What will she do? Let’s read and find out!
Read John 2:1-12
Jesus’ First Miraculous Sign
Turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana was the first of Jesus’ miraculous signs, attesting to His identity as Messiah and the Son of God. John specifies that after this sign, Jesus’ disciples believed in him (v 11). Jesus did not do any miracles during his childhood or early manhood but lived as an ordinary Galilean man with his divine identity hidden. In each of the seven signs that John includes, the emphasis is on the way in which the “sign” reveals Jesus’ messianic character and on the exceptional and striking nature of the feat accomplished by Jesus—such as the large quantity and high quality of wine in our reading today. Later readings will include an official’s son healed from a long distance away by the sheer power of Jesus’ word (4:47–50), an invalid’s recovery from a 38-year-long ordeal (5:5), an incredibly large quantity of food produced by Jesus (6:13), a man’s recovery from lifelong blindness (9:1–2), and the raising of His dear friend, Lazarus, after four days dead in the tomb (11:17, 39). This miracle of turning water into wine demonstrated the glory of Jesus as the sovereign Creator and ruler of the material universe and also as the merciful God who provides abundantly for his people’s needs.
Mary didn’t know how Jesus would help to solve this couple’s humiliating mistake of not having enough wine for their wedding guests, but trusted that He was the only One who could. And He delivered more than she, the bridegroom or the headwaiter could have possibly imagined. “Everyone sets out the fine wine first, then, after people are drunk, the inferior. But you have kept the fine wine until now.” (v 10) Lemons to lemonade!
Bible teacher and speaker, Beth Moore, wrote in her bible study Breaking Free, “God will sometimes allow things to get bad enough that we will be forced to look up. Victory always begins with a cry for help. When we come to the end of ourselves and cry out for help, amazing things will happen.”
Big Picture Questions for Today:
* Jesus’ mother, Mary, was in a sour situation. Poor planning had jeopardized a beautiful celebration of love. This was an insurmountable problem that no one else could solve. Yet Jesus had not revealed His true power and identity to this point. How did Mary know to ask Jesus for help? Why do you think He helped her?
* What about you? How do you handle the difficult seasons in your life? How we choose to move through the situations of our lives reflects in whom or what we have put our trust. Our response impacts not only us but those around us. Let’s not sour anyone towards God, the world does that enough all on its own.
Pray Ephesians 3:19-21 today, “Father may we know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to You who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us— to You be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
“Our God,” by Chris Tomlin
Our God - Chris Tomlin (with lyrics)
