The Thorns I Can't Escape
I like to imagine the joy Adam must have felt when harvesting a crop without entangling himself in thorns. Not a joy born out of comparison—he’d never known it to be any other way—but a joy born from deep contentment that this was good, just as God had declared it to be. How good it must have been to reap without fear of failure, without the strangling effect of the curse, without the sorrow of unfulfilling labour, without sin. That joy only exists as a resounding ache in the collective memory of humanity, for to till the soil now we must irrigate it with our sweat and then curse the barren tree when it mocks our empty stomach.
God has called me to a life in the soil. He asked me to lift me eyes and see the fields, ripe for harvest, ready for the taking. So I carried my hoe and shears with joyful expectation, but it isn’t as straightforward as I first believed. Thorns awaited. Among the wheat were tares also. Hidden within the flock were wolves. The cares of the world entwined their choking tendrils around my throat and threatened to silence my voice.
Worse still are the thorns I can’t escape, not because of the threats from without, but springing from the flesh that still lurks within. These are thorns I carry with me, piercing me as I dig the channels that will bring water to the crop, etching deep furrows of their own, cutting the soft underside of my soul and causing me to cry out in anguished desperation.
“Lord, deliver me.”
To which comes the gentle voice of one who knows the pain, one who also endured thorns.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.”
Thorns.
But thorns don’t bind the end of the story together. They may have closed a chapter but they don’t have the final word.
Thorns are a light and momentary affliction, a precursor to glory. Even when Adam heard the heavy labouring of the curse descend on him in a garden no longer good, it was soon followed by a promise.
The thorns that found their sprout in Eden would bear their fruit at Golgotha as they twisted and tore at the Lamb who still covers our sin and shame. What was intended to mock became a crown of victory, and from that day to this the thorns wither. Dry and brittle, gathered for the fire, they still cut and pierce in futile defiance, but the Lamb has spoken, “It is finished,” and the future is sealed.
The thorns will burn.
Even the eternal memory of them will no longer bring pain. Where once those thorns invited tears…
“Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the house of David and the residents of Jerusalem, and they will look at me whom they pierced. They will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly for him as one weeps for a firstborn.” (Zechariah 12:10, CSB)
…instead they will one day invoke praise.
“Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. Look, the Lion from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered so that he is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.””
Then I saw one like a slaughtered lamb standing in the midst of the throne…
Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels around the throne, and also of the living creatures and of the elders. Their number was countless thousands, plus thousands of thousands. They said with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing!
…The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.
Revelation 5
There are thorns I can’t escape. Yet. But my thorns are not my Master, instead, they serve me. Grace truly is sufficient.
“Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16–18, CSB)
