Twining's St Clements

Twining’s St Clements fruit infusion is marketed as a ‘Herbal Infusion with Orange and Lemon Flavours’. Alongside the lemon and orange peel, there are rosehips, apple pieces, hibiscus and roasted chicory root. I am sure that there are good reasons for so varied an assortment of bits in that bag, though one of them must surely be to offset the natural tartness of lemon.

As far as I can tell, that bitter yellow fruit is not recorded in scripture, though there are plenty of websites and sermons which cannot resist discussing lemons in ironic lists of spiritual fruit. I could scarcely take lemon on its own, but mixed with other flavours, it complements the whole. We cannot escape the bitterness and the sharpness of life in a fallen world, but the Lord graciously tempers its effects with other flavours, not least the wonderful hope we have in Christ Jesus, who has gone to prepare a place for us.

Indeed it was for my own peace that I had great bitterness; but You have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption, for You have cast all my sins behind Your back. Isaiah 38:17