Thorns and Sin

Thorns

When I set up my Picasa account I added pictures of these Honey Locust thorns we have on our property. Some of you may have heard my refer to these in conversations. Let me just say a few things about Honey Locust. I hate these thorns. They are evil. When I think of sin, an image of this plant springs into my mind. More than once I have had a thorn from these bushes push its way THROUGH the sole of my shoes and stab me in the foot. When God told Adam that the land would produce thorns, I believe he had these suckers in mind.

I pruned some near the house back to mere stubs during the spring, but have watched them steadily grow back over the last few months. With a free day last week I took some out, and attacked more in the field on Saturday. You see the only way to fight these things is to take a shovel or pick axe and pull the entire root system out. It takes work, but unless you attack the root you will be out there in two months getting stabbed in the foot again.

As I was sweating and nursing a few puncture wounds while I pulled and dug, I realized how very much like sin these thorns really are. You can try to hide both with quick fixes and cosmetic remedies, but this is only temporary. To get lasting results you have to attack head on, and most likely it will hurt.

Not only is going after the root of sin and honey locust the best course of action, but unfortunately it is not a permanent fix.  There is no guarantee it won’t come back in the same place, but hopefully each time you fight it, and tear more of it out by the roots it will become a little more rare. I hope that next summer these thorns will be more harder to find.