God Is in the Lemonade Business

As we’re walking in faith with God all of us will face the time that will challenge our faith and threaten to derail it altogether, and that’s when we have faith that God will bring something good or prevent something bad and He does not.

The cancer that you asked to be healed and knew it would be, isn’t. The marriage that you were absolutely trusting God for falls apart. The loved one struggling with addiction continues to struggle. The job you prayed for so fervently falls through.

When something big, or even life-shattering hits you, you wonder what happened. Is God really there? Did I do something wrong– should I have prayed more or trusted more or done something more?  Many people stare into the face of disappointment and tragedy and walk away, never to try to walk by faith again.

But when we are confronted with the fact that life can be very hard and that suffering is very real, we can hold onto an even deeper truth: that God is in the lemonade business.

Those of you who have watched the television show This Is Us can immediately relate to what I’m saying. From the first episode on, this show displays life in all its rawness— the emotional pain that will not go away, the cancer that doesn’t find a cure, the addiction that gets worse instead of better, the baby that never gets a chance to be born. And I think it was so wonderful that from that first episode the seed was planted in the viewers’ minds: life is hard, but the lemonade is there, ready to be made.

The millions of people tuning in to watch This Is Us every week, tissues in hand, are not watching it to see a perfect family leading a perfect life. No, what we see is struggle and tragedy, but in the midst of them love and truth and beauty being created from them. 

We will all face challenges, suffering, and tragedy in our lives. It is right and good to pray for that relationship to be saved, that illness to be healed. But when instead the worst happens, we do not have to abandon our walk of faith. We can choose to go deeper into our faith, and know and trust that God is taking even the worst pain and is creating beauty from it.

God is in the lemonade business.