featured image

 

homemade lemonade and shamrock cookies

 

Lemonade is made of lemon juice, sugar and water. Three ingredients: one tasty beverage. Cookies are made of sugar, flour, and milk. Three ingredients: one tasty snack. Combine them to drive home how the Trinity works.

Materials:

• 1 cup lemon juice

• 7 cups of water

• 1 cup of sugar

• Large pitcher

• Ice cubes

• Bucket for ice cubes

• Cups

• Wooden spoon

• Shamrock cookies (homemade or store-bought!)

Preparation:

1. To properly make homemade lemonade, the sugar needs to be dissolved. At  home or before class starts, heat 2 cups of water to boiling. Add the cup of  sugar and stir until it is a pasty liquid. Put aside.

2. Pour the remaining 5 cups of water into the pitcher.

3. Bring ice cubes out of the church kitchen freezer just before snack time.

 

Introduction:

Remember that in the Trinity we have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. These are three separate beings, yet we say we worship one God. It’s like this:

Hold up the cup of lemon juice.

This is the juice of a lemon. It is the basis for making lemonade. The lemon juice is like God the Father. It is a very important ingredient and makes lemonade taste like lemonade. Otherwise it would just be sugar water. 

Put the lemon juice down and hold up the pitcher of water.

Water is the basis of all life. Jesus gave us spiritual life by dying on the cross and saving us from all our wrong thinking and wrong doing. Jesus is the basis for all life in heaven. 

Put the water down and hold up the sugar.

Sugar makes things taste good. Some things that are good for us are too hard for us to eat without it. For example, think of sucking on a lemon or drinking straight lemon juice.  What would that taste like? 

Bitter and difficult to swallow.

Because of our mistakes and wrongful thinking, a perfect being like God is hard for us to listen to. What He says sounds impossible. God the Father is so beautiful and so powerful and so good that when the Hebrews were in the desert, they asked Moses to go out and meet with him. They said if they looked at Him, they would “surely die.” 

But the Holy Spirit becomes part of us, and then we are able to speak with God and hear His voice. 

Three ingredients: Lemon juice, sugar and water. What happens when we put them all together? 

They become lemonade.

Put all the ingredients into the pitcher and stir.

Now we have a wonderful beverage—yummy lemonade. There’s only one thing missing. 

Hold up the bucket of ice cubes.

We are a little like these ice cubes. Have you ever heard the expression, “She’s a very cold person?” Or “she’s got an icy exterior?” What does that mean? 

That a person is not very nice.

We’re a little like that without Jesus. When we accept Jesus into our hearts, God starts melting our hearts and rounding us out. We get to “mix up” and be in close company with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Pour the ice into the pitcher and stir.

Pick up a Shamrock cookie.

The same holds true here. We have three leaves, but one Shamrock. We have three ingredients: Sugar, flour and milk, but one cookie. 

Let’s eat and drink and be glad that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one, as St. Patrick tried so hard to teach. Let’s be glad that thanks to Jesus dying on the cross, that we can now mix in with the Trinity of One God, just like these ice cubes are mixing in with the sugar, water, and lemon.

Copyright 2014, Mary Kate Warner