We’ve all heard popular expressions about changing lemons into lemonade, looking on the bright side, seeing a glass half full instead of half empty. These sayings can encourage a happier outlook on life. But is optimism enough? 

Seeing a half-full glass is definitely better than seeing a half-empty one. Lasting satisfaction, though, usually calls for a completely full glass. Is this even possible? Yes! There is a way to transform longing into a tangible, spiritual perspective, one that moves us toward understanding God, good, as eternal and dependable.

Christ Jesus demonstrated this. Over and over, he brought healing to unhappy or desperate circumstances by perceiving each one from a divine viewpoint. Early in his healing career, for instance, he encountered a problem at a wedding. Like today, the custom at that time was to celebrate together by sharing wine. But the wedding host had run out of wine, a distressing lapse in hospitality. When Jesus was asked to help, his God-inspired perspective replaced the scene of lack with one of abundance. He requested water—and changed it into wine (see John 2:1–10).

In this instance, Christ Jesus proved that God, his and everyone’s Father, is boundless good itself, richly supplying every need. Right where lack and inadequacy appeared, God’s limitless nature was the reality. Jesus exchanged the accepted material outlook for the heavenly view, and the situation changed accordingly. 

There is never a moment when we can be left out of or separated from God’s limitless supply.

This Christly viewpoint is present today, making clear to human consciousness the bountiful goodness of God, divine Love, and our goodness as God’s likeness. It shows us that there is never a moment when we can be left out of or separated from God’s limitless supply. His very nature is infinite, so He is everywhere! Mary Baker Eddy, a spiritual thinker and devoted follower of Christ Jesus, assures us, “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 494). 

Every example of Love meeting human needs is anchored firmly in the first chapter of Genesis, the record of God, Spirit, creating everything as very good. This spiritual account defines God’s will as good, Spirit as the substance of all creation, and each need as supplied from the very beginning. Jesus clarifies this in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). All humanity can experience God’s heavenly reality here on earth. The reality is that no disappointment, no lack, no discouragement, no discomfort can exist in God’s creation or its expression. This is divine Science, or Christian Science, provable in individual experience and beyond.

Last year our daughter became engaged, and we began the happy task of preparing for the wedding. At first, we weren’t thinking about the water-to-wine story. But it seemed that as soon as the engagement was announced, dissension and fear descended on the planning process. Conflicts arose over the location, with worries over who might be left out. Old hurts surfaced about other decisions as well, and the potential for new hurts emerged. 

My husband, our daughter, and I were committed to seeing this joyous occasion through the lens of prayer—to feeling certain that both the preparations and the event could be entirely free from discord or conflict. We secured our thought of the wedding and marriage in the kingdom of heaven, the divine reality where the harmony, clarity, and peace of infinite Love, God, are supreme. Instead of identifying obstacles as challenges, we looked for divine Love’s harmony at work, embracing every aspect of this event. 

We asked ourselves, for instance, about the holy motive behind this event. A wedding, like the marriage it initiates, is dedicated to commitment, sharing, and unity. It includes the pledging of support between two people in marriage and the joining of families, and encourages a path of progress. We pondered these statements from Science and Health: “Marriage is the legal and moral provision for generation among human kind” and “Marriage should improve the human species, becoming a barrier against vice, a protection to woman, strength to man, and a centre for the affections” (pp. 56, 60). These wise declarations uplifted and infused our sense of the marriage—and wedding—with a deep and certain peace and love.

With this thought shift, solutions came to light, greater harmony was evidenced, and the way forward was clear.

As we prayed to embrace a higher, more spiritual view of the planning, the wedding, and the family time together, we found our thoughts changing from water into wine—from mere human planning to spiritual inspiration. Rather than settling for compromises (the mundane, mortal view of a half-full glass), we reminded ourselves that God’s will is good and provides a solution for every problem. With this thought shift, solutions came to light, greater harmony was evidenced, and the way forward was clear.

Our daughter reasoned this way when, at a crucial moment during the rehearsal, her car keys were nowhere to be found. As she reached out in prayer to feel the leading of Love, the keys were quickly located. Then, on the day of the wedding, she called to say she was feeling a migraine coming on and asked us to pray for her. Gaining a diviner outlook, we could see that turmoil, fear, and stress had no place in God’s loving care. That’s where every good activity takes place, so the day was already filled with the substance of God as Spirit. Within the hour, she was feeling fine. 

Changing water into wine speaks to a powerful truth about thought—and about spiritual reality. We can decide not to accept discord or lack or ill health. We can ask ourselves what immortal Love is knowing, what infinite Spirit is recognizing, what intelligent divine Mind has planned. This frees us to comprehend the scene from God’s perspective, to let divine Truth and Love govern our thinking, and to experience healing as a sure result.

Science and Health offers this prayer: “May Christ, Truth, be present at every bridal altar to turn the water into wine and to give to human life an inspiration by which man’s spiritual and eternal existence may be discerned” (p. 65). Isn’t this what we want all the time—at weddings and everywhere? As we discern more of our “spiritual and eternal existence,” disagreeable situations are transformed into evidence of abundant good. Lemons become lemonade, the glass is filled, the water is changed to wine.