At the time of writing, no one knows the outcome of one of the most significant and impactful presidential elections of our lifetime.
It might be a good time to reflect on what God has said: He has everything under control.
If you don’t believe in God, Mother Nature might say the same thing.
It seemed that every villa we saw on a trip to Italy two years ago was either surrounded by thousands of olive trees, acres of vineyards or hundreds of trees heavy with bright yellow orbs of lemons.
We thought we would try our luck with a Meyer lemon tree from a local nursery. To my utter surprise, the Meyer Lemon tree liked our sunny back porch. It put out new leaves and shoots. Soon thereafter, dozens and then hundreds of small, fragrant white blossoms dotted the entire canopy.
I had nothing to do with it other than occasional watering. It was entirely a work of nature ― or God’s handiwork, take your pick.
Seeing hundreds of blossoms had me imagining harvesting bushels of lemons come the fall. However, I soon noticed blossoms starting to fall to the porch leading to some minor panic about whether I had over-watered or underwatered it.
My nerves began to ease when I saw dozens of tiny green buds replacing the remaining blossoms, which looked like they were going to be lemons one day. Instead of hundreds of lemons, I started to envision picking 50 or 60 lemons come harvest time.
My joy was short-lived since over the next month, five, 10, 20 and then 40 or more of these small buds turned whitish and fell harmlessly to the porch. In a panic again, I googled to see what I had done wrong only to be pleasantly surprised to find out I had witnessed another amazing feat of God’s providence in nature.
In some mysterious way, my Meyer lemon tree selectively analyzed each of its tiny green lemons and jettisoned the ones with defects.
The tree “knew” it would be wasting its time and energy pursuing some fruitless effort and saved itself the trouble.
Perhaps this can be chalked up to billions of years of natural selection and survival of the fittest ― or maybe it can be ascribed as one of God’s amazing mysteries of design for life. If evolution was the only life-perpetuating force in the universe, meaning there was no spiritual or religious force out there, are there thousands of other Meyer lemon trees on any of the other trillions of planets in the billions of galaxies that followed the exact same iterations of natural selection as what happened here on Earth?
If it happened once, it could have happened again, according to science.
Then again, unless there was a spark to start life on a distant planet, there is a chance there is no life anywhere else in the universe. We Earthlings may be the only derivatives of stardust put together by God in a miraculous way to see the stars and heavens above.
As it says in Psalms: “The highest heavens belong to the LORD, but the earth he has given to mankind.”
If you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God did all this for us, would it make any difference in your life? Would you do your living any differently?
Such big questions can come out of a modest Meyer lemon tree.
When the buds stopped falling and the final eight stayed put and started to grow over the summer, I was thrilled. They were dark green for most of the past three months, so green that several people remarked they looked more like limes that would never ripen and turn into bright yellow lemons.
I got poked one day by a spike I swore was not there the day before. Again, to my surprise, after another Google search, these miracles of God’s nature knew when and how to grow sharp spikes near the ripening fruit to protect them from non-discriminating pests like squirrels or birds.
The DNA of the Meyer lemon tree “knew” how to decide which fruit to protect until it could be picked. God — or nature, if you will — knows how to protect the young fruit when it simply can’t help itself.
I picked two of them last week. They were perfect. Now all I have to do is figure out how to use them in the best possible way.
God, or nature, is in control of life. Life will go on regardless of who was elected president of the United States of America and which party controls Congress.
At the risk of sounding trite and old-fashioned, it is up to us to decide whether the Meyer lemons we pick will be turned into sweet lemonade or sour hard rock candy.
We still have that choice every day.
