BY: Mr. Samuel Chackalamannil, Ph. D.
“Make a Lemonade with It”
“If life gives you a lemon, make lemonade with it.” Perhaps you have heard this saying. It means that it is up to you to make the best out of the circumstances that you are in. In its face value this may sound a rather harsh and unsympathetic demand without much consideration for the circumstances that one might be in. But there is a sense in which this saying carries a very practical message. Before I explain myself, let me share this story.
It happened in a large school district in this country. In an attempt to produce a batch of exceptionally trained students the school board instituted a plan. In a special process they selected a group of students and told them, “You are very special in the entire school system and you have been selected to participate in an ambitious curriculum. You will be taught by very special teachers and you will learn more than any other group of students not only in the entire school system but in the entire country which will help you go to the best colleges.” A special group of teachers were also selected and they were told, “You are a very special group of teachers in the entire school system and you are especially selected to teach this class of highly achieving students. You will be able to teach them these advanced courses better than any other teachers and your students will learn more than any other students.” The program went underway and the results were exceptional with the students scoring very high in the achievement tests. Now a secret was revealed to everybody including the students and teachers. The students that were selected were not the best students, but a randomly picked group of average students in the school system. Likewise the teachers that were selected to teach these courses were not the best teachers, but were a randomly selected group of teachers from the school system. Here we see “average” students and teachers accomplishing extraordinary academic success because they thought they were special.
Our accomplishments have a lot to do with what we expect from ourselves, which in turn depend on our attitude and motivation, and it has less to do with the privileges have. We often underestimate our own abilities and potential because we fail to tap into the resources within us. It is apt to recall the parable of the talents in this context. There are three individuals (“servants” as they are referred to) in this parable. Each of them is given a different measure of talents. At the end of their work period, two of them doubled their talents and the third one earned nothing and returned what he was given. What is interesting is his explanation: “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed,so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.” Obviously this individual has a bad attitude toward his master and refused to work hard because he failed to heed his calling.
The parable teaches us the due-diligence needed in the Kingdom of God. It also teaches us that in our every day life how vigilant, earnest and hard working we need to be. When people pine about what they don’t have and whine about how badly they are treated, it often indicates their inescapable submission to failure. This is not to say that circumstances are not important. Very much so, but we cannot wait for our circumstance to change; we should change our circumstances which requires our diligent efforts.
Some people think what they have got is a “lemon” in life. They look at others and say I don’t have that kind of talents or privileges, so I cannot be accomplished. Remember, in the parable of the talents the first two servants earned varying amounts of talents, proportionate to what they started with, but both of them doubled their portions. The third one had a broken relationship with the master, so he did not heed his calling nor realized his potential and ended up being a loser.
Christ did not call his disciples from among the privileged upper class or educated Sadducees. He chose them from among the common people. We know that they all had their shortcomings. Matthew was a tax collector—perhaps the worst profession to hold in those days! Peter was boastful, rash tongued, trigger happy (loped off the right year of the high priest’s servant), and he denied Christ. Thomas was a skeptic. Yet in God’s Kingdom they did extraordinary things and they became the pillars of the Church. There are several instances in the Bible where exceptionally gifted people turned out to be a failure also. Samson had the spirit of the Lord on him, but tragically failed in life, King Saul started out right but ended tragically, Solomon had a great beginning but he failed in the end, etc. So it is not where you start but where you end up that matters, and your success depends on what you make out of your life. Every one of us is special to God and we have our prize set for us; it is up to us to reach that potential.