I recently watched a video of a teacher having her art class paint a picture of strawberries. Every student was doing good, but there was one student who always did exceptional on her work. Something had changed in her life to make the paintings look horrible in their eyes. She would always put black streaks in the pictures and made the picture look messed up. 

  Every time she would mess up, her teacher would scold her for how she did an excellent job before, but now they just look horrible. 

  She was placed in a competition where she painted lemons and then black streaks on top, and the judges wanted her to explain her reasoning. Her response was that she was expressing what she was going through in the painting and how sometimes we have a great life and then circumstances put black streaks in this beautiful parts but that's what makes the brighter side stand out. She said, "When life gives you lemons, you have to make lemonade."

One thing I want to encourage you with this morning is that you never know what someone is going through and you may not understand everything but sometimes all you can be is an encouragement to that person to look on the bright side of things. 

  Just because clouds have appeared doesn't mean the sun is not shining. We may not see the sun, but it still is there. 

Your Fire-starter challenge is to encourage someone going through a hard time.