Lemonade: Family


Lemons are sour, and when we have a sour experience, we say we've been handed a bunch of lemons!  One of my favorite sayings is, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."  Through God's power, we can take a bad experience and turn it into something good.

A Bible character who epitomizes that saying is Joseph.  His story begins in Genesis 37.  In our worship unit, we're going to see how he dealt with lemons in injustice, opportunity, and mercy.  We start with seeing how he experienced lemons in his family life.

"Dysfunctional family" is a redundant term!  Every family has a degree of dysfunction.  Joseph's family had more than a little. His father Jacob favored him above his brothers, and that created terrible problems in his family.  Things got so bad, his brothers conspired to kill him.  But they saw a way to get rid of him and make money off him by selling him to a caravan of Ishmaelite traders.  They told their father he had been killed by a wild animal.

From this story of Joseph, we learn that no family is perfect.  Every family has some degree of dysfunction.  Don't envy other families, because they are probably just as dysfunctional as yours. 

We also learn that we should take responsibility for our part of the dysfunction.  Joseph wasn't completely innocent.  He comes across as arrogant and entitled.  We can't change the attitudes of the members of our family, but we can change our own and stop contributing to the dysfunction.

Finally, we can know that God can work in the midst of our dysfunction to do wonderful things.  God would work Joseph's situation for good.  We can lean on our perfect heavenly Father amid our family struggles, and find his purpose and peace.

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