As long as they lived, I remember my parents reminding me of the old saying "if the world gives you nothing but lemons, make lemonade". That was a big part of my learning to accept all things as IS, to think positively and to make the best of any situation in life.

I also remember the common first "business" venture of young children when they wanted money for something, to set up a lemonade stand on the sidewalk and sell glasses of lemonade to kindly neighbors. The cost of the product was never considered, as "Mommy" always just provided the lemonade (with lots of sugar), and the total income was considered "profit". In my youth, we would consider ourselves very lucky if we made 30 cents to divide two or three ways.

Though we were "serious" about our lemonade "business". I guess at some level we really knew it was "just pretend", and that it would never be a REAL method to make our way in the world. Much as we liked the idea of being "independent", we knew, deep down inside, that we were totally dependent upon our parents, and would always go home at the end of the day, no matter how little lemonade we sold.

Going through a difficult financial condition over the past few months, I have been repeatedly challenged about my faith in the spiritual realm, my entire belief system of who we are and why we are here. Appealing to all my friends sharing the spiritual path, I received wonderful moral support and compassion, but almost always followed by the advice "get a job". Yet each time when I meditate, I get the message that I already have a job, working for God full time, and with no will other than to share the light and love and joy that IS all that IS. Even when I considered "jobs", circumstances quickly showed me that the attempt would have been futile even if I had pursued it, DEMONSTRATING my faith.

It suddenly became clear that, though many people espouse the belief that we are truly spiritual BEings, the venture into the spiritual realm is as tentative as the lemonade stand is to children. Though they say they believe, deep down in their hearts they KNOW they have to work to provide for themselves, to have a job to "make" money, just as the children "know" they will go home when the sun sets. If one of them defied that belief, actually set out to create a career by selling lemonade, he would be laughed at, reviled, and considered "crazy" and "stupid".

It IS not easy to walk the talk, to demonstrate our spiritual identity in the material world. After all, billions of people over thousands of years have established the norm, the "reality" of race belief in our identity as physical bodies, Few indeed, have been the wise ones who began to understand, and to share their wisdom. Fewer still have been the Masters who DEMONSTRATED their belief.

We are all spiritual children, making our first tentative forays into the world as creators of our own reality. Each must build his faith, step by step, of his OWN volition, his OWN desire, and his OWN faith. None are doing it wrong, none are doing it "better" than any others, wee are all proceeding at our own pace.

And all IS in Divine order.