June 2010
Dear Friends,
Found some blackberries in my yard today that I didn’t know were there. What a sweet surprise. Beautiful fat black and red berries against the dark green of the leaves. An incredibly skilled Artist conjured those colors and shapes. When you pick up a vine, there are even more berries hidden underneath. I had to search for them and be slow and careful not to be stabbed by the thorns. Some of the thorns are deceitfully small where you can’t even see them, but can surely feel them. Some of them are huge and although you try to avoid them, they sometimes still get you and are difficult to pull out. I found out the hard way that there’s even a weed that can cause the skin to break out in whelps and burn like fire when you merely brush against it. It grows beside blackberries. Why all the trouble for some berries? The trouble came in Genesis 3 when mankind decided to do it their own way and not trust the grand plan already in place.
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
Is it worth it to contend with thorns, poison ivy, possible snakes hiding? Is joy worth it when in order to get to it we have to contend with annoyances, arguments, confusion, frustration with ourselves and others?
Small thorns, the ones that you can’t see, that grab into your skin and irritate it for hours afterward — these are like the things we allow ourselves to dwell on and fester over even though they’re small. He keeps leaving the milk out, the kids won’t close the door when they go outside, she calls at the most inconvenient times. We don’t even realize these are getting to us sometimes, but when we don’t let them go they build up to the point of us committing sin. Maybe yelling needlessly at the kids, treating our spouse unkindly, ignoring a friend in need.
Proverbs 19:11 – A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.
The big thorns. The hurtful things that we can clearly see. Our choice is whether we focus on them and how they’re hurting us and let that stop our progress, or whether we endure them and reach past them to get to the good fruit that is most certainly there. Because sin entered the world, it is now a fact of life that these are going to be a part of everyday life. Cancer, death, natural disasters, overwhelming financial struggles, jobs that are stressful and hard.
Romans 12:12 – Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
What a simple yet powerful verse. There is ALWAYS hope that can bring us joy. Even in the most dire circumstances, there is always the hope of a Savior that offers true life forever more. Our loving Father can give us the patience to endure affliction. It doesn’t come naturally to our human nature, but if we are a child of God, we can have as much patience as we need from Him. Faithful prayer keeps us in constant communion with Him. He doesn’t need us to pray, but He wants us to. How else will we have a relationship with Him that keeps growing and evolving? To have a good relationship with someone, you have to talk to them.
And, what about those pesky weeds that burn the skin? Maybe that’s sin. It’s not a part of the fruit vine, but it’s right beside it, waiting to hurt us. All you have to do is brush against it and it can infect you. We often tend to think that we can maintain relationships with people that are not good for us with the hope that we’ll rub off some good qualities on them. The reality is that more often than not, they are rubbing off bad qualities on us. And, it can sometimes just be a matter of knowing what to look for. If I had recognized that weed, I could have avoided it altogether, stepped on it, or gone another way. We all have that tendency to go back to the same familiar sins over and over. But, there are also the ones that we might not even be aware of for a while. Wasting resources that someone else could use, failing to help a neighbor in need, not telling someone the full truth. We should all be asking God to show us the weeds that are popping up in our lives, choking out our fruit. Because, when we have weeds, or sin, it can distract people from the fruit that God is producing through us. When we recognize the sin, He can empower us to avoid it and focus on the fruit that He wants us to have.
Ah, the fruit. Sweet and delicious, warmed by the sun. The Father wants us to have the fruit. He wants to show us that it is worth it to endure the thorns. He blesses us with family, with faithful friends, with an incredibly beautiful and complex creation all around us. And, most, if not all of us, have fruit in our own lives that we haven’t even appreciated, much less harvested. How many years have I lived here and not seen those blackberries growing in our yard? They rotted right on the vine. God gives us each skills and abilities, material possessions, and the ability to love. Are we using those like we should? Are we taking advantage of the fruit He gives us to bless others? Or is it wasted because we get distracted and discouraged by all the thorns and weeds? Even those who do not choose to follow Christ have fruit from God in their lives. God is present everywhere, whether or not He’s acknowledged. All good comes from Him.
But, the best of all the fruit, is Him. He is worth any thorns. Our Lord, our Savior, our Daddy is life for us. He is the only truth and the only life. He is Hope in a world that became hopeless when sin overtook it. So, friends, soak up as much of Him as you can. Talk to Him all the time. Throw yourself daily into His Truth, which He so graciously wrote down for us through faithful servants in ages past. Notice the world He created especially for us because He loved us.
Worth the Thorns,
Hebrews 13:16 “And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.”