On the South America Mission base behind Refugio, one of the families has a small grove of oranges. They are in full harvest mode right now, so I was blessed to receive a rather large bag full of them. Now these oranges aren’t the pretty orange color that are sweet and refreshing to eat! These oranges here are yellow/green in color and are only good for squeezing to make juice. So that’s what I set out to do…start squeezing those oranges to get me some juice!
37 oranges later, I have very tired arms and about 1.25 quarts of juice…In the midst of all that squeezing I had some musings come to mind…
“If life gives you lemons, make lemonade”…many of us have heard and know this saying well. But I thought, what would it mean if we received oranges in life instead? I feel like we are right smack in the middle of “If life gives you oranges, make orange juice” kind of situations right now. Being quarantined, stuck at home, searching for ways to stay busy and hoping we and those we love don’t get sick aren’t exactly lemons in the literal sense of that phrase. They are more like oranges…specifically more like the oranges here, they are different and kind of unknown from the oranges we’re used to, but we don’t just let them go to waste, we figured out what they are good for – juice.
How do we apply that to our current situation of so many unknowns? We trust God to show us what we’re good for and meant to do. If we look to Micah 6:8, we know we are called to “do justice, and to love kindness(or mercy), and to walk humbly with your God.” We are in a time where we need to ask God for direction for how to live out these things in more creative ways in this very different time, but we are still called to live this way, not sit back and do nothing. So lets be creative and make some orange juice out of unfamiliar oranges and see where God leads us in the process!