3-30-2015

Good Morning All,

         Genesis 3: 17-18; “And to Adam he (God) said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field.”

   Thorns; it always gets back to thorns.  While Adam listened to God tell him part of the price that his sin was going to cost, he heard things that most people don’t want to hear.  He heard “cursed” “in pain” “thorns and thistles”.  Talk about a list that you don’t want to have; that list probably is just about as bad as it gets.  Adam was told that the ground, and his life, was not going to be fun.

   I grew up on a farm.  I spent a lot of my years farming.  Most of the members of my church are farmers.  Most of the people I went to school with are farmers.  Most of the people I know are farmers.  I know what it feels like and what it looks like when you think the ground is cursed.  I know what it is like to have the ground refuse to yield its bounty, even in a meager fashion.  I know what it looks like when thorns and thistles rob the land of moisture and nutrients and leave nothing to harvest.  Even in the direst of years, when a single sprout of grain refused to grow; thistles and thorns grow with a voracious and destructive ire.  They will take what little is there and, with a mocking smile, look to the farmer and laugh.  The emptiness and the meagerness hollow the farmer out leaving a pit in your soul larger than life.  Thorns and thistles cause pain beyond the simple prick of the finger or the scrape of an arm; thorns and thistles suck the marrow from your spirit.

   If you have never farmed, you have probably felt the same way at other times of your life.  A loving relationship that dries up and blows away is just as painful.  False accusations and false stories that harmed your reputation or your standing with your family and friends gone.  Drugs or alcohol can hollow you out just as easily.  Sin looks at us and mocks us leaving us feeling cursed, in pain, dealing with thorns and thistles that never go away.

   As we begin Holy Week, we begin to look at a time when Jesus, God’s own Son, was “cursed” “in pain” covered with “thorns”.  He took it all; all the cursedness, pain and thorns that God’s wrath, for you but directed at Jesus, so that you and I would be blessed, be healed, and live without thorns.  It started with thorns so it is probably poetic that it ends with thorns.  Yet it is not some poetic justice that we read; it is God’s incredible love poured out upon you and upon me.  We have God’s blessing, not his curse upon us now.  We have a life filled with love and hope and no thorns waiting for us because Jesus took our cursedness, pain and thorns and gives to us love, hope, peace and salvation.

Father, we deserve all the pain and cursedness yet in your amazing grace and mercy, you poured it out upon Jesus in order to give us life.  Move us to live our life in total thanksgiving to you.  Keep us in your loving arms and lead us to reach out in love to those who are stuck in the cursed, pain and thorns to hear your words of life and hope.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret