Php 1:12-13, 12 I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, 13 so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.
It’s been said that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. It is a proverbial phrase used to encourage optimism and a positive can-do attitude in the face of adversities or misfortunes. It is refusing to let limitations, setbacks, disappointments stop you from advancing. That was Paul’s way of responding to adversities.
Frances J. Crosby a woman born in 1820 in Brewster, NY may mean little or nothing to us until we understand her work in history. She was a poet and hymns writer but physically blind all her life. Fanny did not look on her blindness as a terrible thing to produce self-pity. In her adult years she would say, “It was the best thing that could have happened to me” or “How in the world could I have lived such a helpful life as I have lived had I not been blind?” She composed thousands of hymns such as “Blessed Assurance”, “All the Way My Savior Leads Me”, “To God Be the Glory”, “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior”, “I Am Thine, O Lord” and many more. She took her disappointments and turned them into appointments. She recognized that though her lemons were sour, she could make lemonades and sweeten them for the glory of God. Disabilities can be grounds to discover new abilities.