Giving from Your Abundance is Rewarding – Especially If Giving Lemons!

Right off the bat, let’s dispense with the old adage, “If life gives you lemons… make lemonade”. Lemons aren’t bad things. And they’re not a consolation prize. Everyone I know LOVES lemons! Okay, now that we’ve gotten that straightened out….

Paul's lemon tree nov 2008

I have a lemon tree in my yard. It’s not a big tree, but it produces 250-300 lemons every year. Big, sweet, Meyer lemons, all ripening at the same time – the first half of December. There’s no way I can consume so many lemons at one time. So, all through the Christmas holiday season, I get to give away these awesome lemons to friends, neighbors, people at church and people at work. I’ve made new friends through giving away these lemons, and I’ve seen how rewarding it is to give what I have to others.

It’s kind of funny, really, to see the way someone smiles so brightly simply because I gave them a small fruit that I possess. And, days or weeks later, someone will come up and say, “Hey, those lemons sure are good. Thanks for sharing that with me”. It took me a while, but I eventually noticed that these lemons are like marked currency, or like banded wild birds or animals with radio tags. That is, I can trace the effect of giving them away, because the results of the gifts come back to me in words from the recipients, telling me that the gift was appreciated, or that it got used in a special way – lemon pie, lemonade, etc….

Are you seeing the analogy, yet? Yes, that’s it. God give us gifts, he grows His fruit in us, and He loves it when we catch hold of the “It is more blessed to give than to receive” concept and begin giving out of our abundance of His fruit. We don’t always see the result of our sharing those gifts with others, though. They don’t usually have bands, or radio tags, or even the bright, distinguishable color of a yellow lemon. Sooooo, we have to tune in a bit more to the Holy Spirit if we want to trace the results of our giving. Or, simply trust that God is using every gift we give to grow His fruit in someone, and they will, in turn, give from their abundance. It’s a beautiful cycle of growing, giving, growing, giving that spreads far and wide.

The tangible lemon giveaway experience has been helpful for me to see that sharing good things produces more love, and I can naturally trust that it gets shared with still others beyond our own circles of influence. I pray that God will do something so obvious and tangible as this for you, too, in some garden patch of spiritual watering and growth in which He is working with you.

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