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In an effort to make our garden more presentable and clear a way to be able to do some maintenance to our garden cabin, armed with a pair of loppers and a brush cutter, this summer I took on a dense four-year tangle of a briar patch.
As a lily among brambles,
so is my love among maidens.
As an apple tree among the trees of the wood,
so is my beloved among young men.
Song of Songs 2:2
You would not be surprised to read that I found no lilies among my brambles. I did however find a beautifully constructed bird’s nest that was once an impenetrably safe haven, for a small avian family.
Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O LORD of hosts,
my King and my God.
Happy are those who live in your house,
ever singing your praise.
Psalm 84:3
As I toiled on through a hot summer’s evening I began fully to appreciate the enormity of my arduous task and to wonder at my stupidity at allowing the neglected corner to get to such a state of entangled desolation.
Attacked on all sides by vicious thorny tendrils, face bleeding and hands impaled by briar barbs, not withstanding heavy duty gardening gloves, I began to see why the Old Testament Writers associated plants such as these as symbolic of sin and the wicked.
Thorns and thistles the ground shall bring forth for you;
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Genesis 3:18
The iniquities of the wicked ensnare them,
and they are caught in the toils of their sin.
They die for lack of discipline,
and because of their great folly they are lost.
Proverbs 5:22
For the LORD has a day of vengeance,
a year of recompense by Israel’s defender.
Isaiah 34:8
- God would destroy the cities of Israel’s enemies -
And thorns shall come up in their palaces, nettles and brambles
in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of jackals, the abode of ostriches.
Isaiah 34:13
You will know the wicked by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.
Matthew 7:16
At least the briars with which I struggled bore some fruit last year but I was unable to reach or gather it. If it was good fruit, I never discovered, unfortunately it had seeded yet more prickly offspring to assail and impede me now.
So it was with gleeful anticipation I contemplated the destruction of these noxious plants, by fire, as I planned their demise upon my bonfire, later that evening, when everybody’s washing was in and their windows closed for the night.
But human beings are born to trouble
just as the sparks fly upward.
“As for me, I would seek God,
and to God I would commit my cause”.
Job 5:7
So I watched as the smoke and flames drifted and leapt skyward, just as, over thousands of years those who toil upon the land by the sweat of their face, have done.
I pondered upon our human condition, and silently expressed my gratitude to The Saviour of the World who took “the trouble we are all born to”, upon Himself, out of love for us sinners all “born to trouble”.
I watched and pondered, until the embers had died to a safely contained radiant glow; and then I went to bed.