When a global pop-star produces an album with a name I can understand it becomes intriguing. The singer, songwriter, record producer and actress Beyoncé did just that last week. The album sold 485,000 copies in its first week so, look out, she is coming to Croke Park, Dublin in July!
The inspiration for the title “Lemonade” has been attributed to her granny and her husband, Jay Z’s granny. On the latter’s 90th birthday she recalled that in her life she was served lemons but she made lemonade!

The album is accompanied by the release of an hour long film which is divided into eleven segments. These are named Intuition, Denial, Anger, Apathy, Emptiness, Accountability, Reformation, Forgiveness and Reconciliation. There are probably quite a few lemons to be found in there!

The visuals provoke complex and at times cryptic ideas about race, gender, power, marriage, infidelity, parenthood, and the experience of black women in America. The group “Black Lives Matter” are represented by three mothers holding pictures of their deceased sons who had been gunned down by the authorities.

The Washington Post called the album a “surprisingly furious song-cycle about infidelity and revenge”, comparing it to the classical genre defined in German lieder by Schumann, Schubert and Brahms.

The artists comment is simply that those who have been served a lemon in life need “lemonade”! “I am about faith and spirituality more so than religion. Doing right by others and not judging. The thing that keeps me grounded is knowing that I’m always protected and that God is in control of things. Even the name of our group, Destiny’s Child, we got out of the Bible,” she said.

The influence of the Bible can be seen and is acknowledged in the artist’s life.
Her physical beauty and very considerable talents need to be dedicated to Jesus in order that they may be multiplied for His glory. In this life talents, used for their own ends, bring diminishing returns!

We cannot sing with any conviction of forgiveness unless we ourselves have had our sins forgiven by Jesus coming from the pardon for sin which He purchased on the cross (Ephesians Chapter 1 verse 7). Then we can sing forgiveness out of our forgiven-ness (Ephesians Chapter 4 verses 32).

When by faith we see the mountain of our sin removed we can truly make peace and reconciliation out of the lemons we have been given by others because the living and reigning Jesus has done so much more for us. Just as Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana (St John Chapter 2) we can take the lemons which were meant for our harm and see the Lord make them into something good – better than lemonade….the finest of wine!