The Red Lemon (#2)
During the recent lectureship at Freed-Hardeman University, our family carved out a little time between sessions to celebrate the twenty-fourth birthday of our oldest grandson. I was totally unaware of the significance of the location of our little party until a friend and brother in Christ mentioned it in a comment on the picture I posted on Facebook. When he saw the background of the picture, it reminded him of one of our family’s “inside jokes” which we have shared with others.
What follows below is a version of something that I wrote for A Legacy of Faith on our grandson’s seventeenth birthday. This version has been edited quite a bit, but, hopefully, not enough to change its original message.
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Early in his life, our oldest grandson began one of those “legends” that every family has. Even some people who are not a part of our family know what we are talking about when we talk about The Red Lemon.
When our grandson first began to speak and to be aware of the world around him, he fell in love with The Red Lemon. He still likes it even though he doesn’t call it The Red Lemon any longer. Apparently, he has inherited his Grampy’s sweet tooth. As a result, he loves ice cream and he learned as a little guy that they serve really good ice cream at The Red Lemon.
Unless you are a part of our family or have been informed about the “inside joke” of our family, you may have never heard of The Red Lemon. I’m fairly certain, however, that you’ve heard of the franchise and have probably visited one of their stores on more than one occasion. You may not call them Red Lemons, though. You may refer to them as Dairy Queens.
Our grandson could not read when he began to notice these places. He had not been conditioned by advertising or anything else to call them Dairy Queens. He only knew what he saw and, to him, the sign looked for all the world like a red lemon. He also knew that this was a great place to get the ice cream he loved (and still loves).
As you laugh with our family (including our grandson) about that, maybe we should all stop and think for a moment. What would you think if you could not read, but saw the Dairy Queen logo? It has changed somewhat since our grandson first saw that logo, but it still looks quite a bit like a red lemon.
I think that something more than an “inside joke” about a place of business may be going on here. In fact, there could be something really serious going on.
Young people know what they see. What they see may often make a lot more sense than what we try to tell them about what they are seeing. They are really good at detecting the inconsistencies between what they actually see and what we try to “explain away” or excuse in our behavior and/or instruction.
The real danger is that our children and/or grandchildren may never develop their own faith or have it destroyed because of what they see in our behavior, what we call our behavior, or how we rationalize it.
I’m thankful that my friend/brother made the connection I failed to make about the location of our birthday party. It brought back some good memories and reminded me of some important truths.
Maybe I’ll celebrate with a DQ Blizzard at The Red Lemon!
AUTHOR: Jim Faughn
