Vinegar on Soda

Proverbs 25:20 [Like] one who takes away a garment in cold weather, [And like] vinegar on soda, [Is] one who sings (light) songs to a heavy heart.

A little research showed that when vinegar and soda are mixed, both neutralize the other. Meaning, the purpose of vinegar is lost as equally as the purpose of soda.

It’s like saying, when you mix salt and sugar, both the sugar and salt lose their sweetness and saltiness respectively.

In the same way, when someone is feeling down. Say he or she has lost a friend, or a loved one, it is cruel to be insensitive. In June, our neighbors lost the mother of the home. That following evening, the children next door were playing party-mood Friday music so loudly on over 4 JBL speakers.

An angry old man in the neighborhood frantically rebuked them; “How can you be this joyful when aunty has died? Don’t be insensitive?”

‘Taking away a garment in cold weather’ could mean, telling someone feeling sad (and it’s just human to vent and weep) that they are not entitled to grieve—which isn’t true. Tears bring a healing in their kind of way. Ours is to support, to be a shoulder to cry on.

When I lost my best friend, I believed he would rise from the dead. I didn’t cry. Little did I know that my faith’s vinegar was noticed by my flesh’s soda and so they conspired to each have their time.

Three months later, after God doing such an amazing act of goodness where a debt of 450000/- was paid up by someone, I was overwhelmed. As tears of joy welled down my cheeks, I grieved as well. I heard the human side of me say,

“You didn’t allow me to grieve properly.”

I didn’t weep because I wanted to. I did because I had to. Otherwise I’d have gone on and on with a lump in my throat and a denial of my emotions, and it could have eaten me up some day.

Of course it’s okay to grieve, but even that has a deadline. If someone is slowly being driven into depression, then I must say the vinegar and soda should meet. Yes we have to understand the down moments of someone, but we shouldn’t allow them to drive them to a point of extreme sorrow.

King David himself grieved for the loss of his first child by Bathsheba. But, when God talked to him, he quickly got up and moved on. He didn’t stay weeping…and God gave him Solomon, who went on to be the wisest man in all Israel & the world then.

This has another side as well. Even if we desire compassion, let us not be the ones who always rush to tell the bad news at an event of good news. There some people who take vinegar (perhaps news of someone’s passing) and bring it to the soda (at someone’s wedding)

They end up neutralizing the joy mood the guests and the bride and groom were supposed to experience, and make them focus on the loss of perhaps that close friend. And then later, after burial, people will touch their cheeks and recall how they had to leave the wedding reception and not enjoy it fully. So you can see how both joy and sorrow were swapped at two events.

This all requires us to be wise in our timing and in our sharing.

Both this timing and sharing are affected by the place of telling. Where & when should we or should we not spread bad vibes?

Vinegar & soda might be as well good and bad. Are we able to still focus on the good when the bad is told. Are we able to magically retain the vinegar even when soda has been sprinkled over.

I’ll leave you with the example of Joshua, Caleb and the other 10 spies. These people had been sent to scout a land that flowed with milk and honey (vinegar) but the land was inhabited by giants (soda)

The prophecy that they’d receive the land was given to them by God, and Joshua & Caleb, didn’t focus on the giants but returned saying that the land was good and that they’d take it. The other ten however believed the giants were too mighty for them. They mixed the soda with the vinegar. The prophecy didn’t come true for them unlike those who believed.

Do not let the negative neutralize your positive. Guard the good you hope to see. For others as well, don’t be the one that neutralizes their vinegar. Let it have its full purpose.