Thorns

It was well into the evening.  The summer sun had almost set. 
There was a knock at the door.
It is my neighbor.
Opening the door, I joined her on my porch.
She was struggling.
Words were not needed to tell me this.  I could see it on her face.

She talked.  I listened.

She was not tired from the battle, she was weary from the war.

After she left, I thought of our talk well into the morning hours.
The Apostle Paul came to mind.  He spoke of a thorn.  A thorn he asked God to take away.

God didn't.

I thought of my neighbor's thorn and how she, like Paul, pleads with God to take it away.

Friends, I wish I had magic words to make it better.
I wish I could tell you words that bring immediate peace.
I wish I could tell you my neighbor left feeling a hundred times lighter.

I can't.

Beloved, Paul found his answer in God's grace.
And in God's power to take the weaknesses and make them strengths.

And that is the hope He gives us.

Maybe you feel the fresh cut of the thorns.
Maybe your hands touch the long-ago healed scars from thorns.
Maybe, like my neighbor, you are so very, very weary of the thorns.

Friends, it is your thorns that fashioned His crown at the cross.

And He did not take it off.
He died with the crown of thorns upon His head.

Your thorns were nailed to that cross.
They died there.
When He rose 3 days later the thorns were gone.
The only thing He held was victory in His nail-pierced hand.
 

And His victory is ours.
Be encouraged

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^{2 Corinthians 12: 8-10}
Concerning this I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in distresses, in persecutions, in difficulties, in behalf of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.