OUCH!

 A dozen-plus roses—some of them forty-plus years old--fill a planting area next to my driveway. My youngest grandson has a naughty habit of taking the quickest route from Mom and Dad's car to the front door, which puts him at risk of lots of thorns grabbing his clothes. He just doesn't listen to his Nana's warning, “Go on the driveway pavement, NOT through the roses.” Well, he's six. What more can I say? Each spring I tend to each bush, carefully cutting away dead stalks and trying to achieve a “bowl” shape with the remaining healthy stalks. If I have done my job correctly, by May I will have a lovely bouquet to pick from the new branches.

But, oh, those thorns! I have a sensitivity to thorn pricks in my hands. If one gets through my thick leather gloves, I head to the kitchen to make a paste of water and MSG (used for meat tenderizing), which seems to help the allergic reaction. The other day when this happened, my thoughts randomly went back to my high school days and that troubled era when some of my classmates were shipped off to the Vietnam War, some never to return. My husband's family had a relative who joined the military and died shortly after landing in Vietnam.

We don't talk much about that conflict. Hopes of liberating Southeast Asia didn't work out. Their fighters' primitive assault strategies helped turn things in their favor. My roses, with their mean thorns, remind me of some of the “weapons” the enemy used: like camouflaged holes in the jungle trails which sent any who stepped on them into deep pits of lethal spikes, grenades, poisonous snakes, or scropions. If you're curious, just search “booby traps” on the internet. You'll learn more than you want to know.

Sadly, booby traps aren't limited to national warfare. They're all around us through social interactions with folks whose minds aren't working as the Lord intended. Instead of loving and affirmative, they're mean-spirited and bitter. Their words—spoken or written—are like booby traps, apt to trip you up and hurt you when you least expect it.

When I've been wounded in such a situation, I'm grateful for God's assurances that He is in control. There's nothing such people can do, as mean as they may get, to separate me from His love. In my young adulthood, when I was dealing with some negative people and situations, the Lord prompted me to memorize some scriptures about victory and perseverance. One was the end of Romans 8:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or sword? As it is written, 'For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.' No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (vv. 35-37).

God's Word says it. I claim it. If I am in right relationship with the Savior, no traps of human deceit, lies, or unfounded accusations can separate me from God's love. The going may get rough at times. But He knows what's on the path ahead. Sometimes He'll warn me to stay away from emotional danger pits. Other times He shows me the safer detour. In this life, I won't escape thorny relationships or hurtful circumstances. But I remember that at the end, God will redeem my pain.

My favorite quote regarding this comes from George Matheson (1842-1905), a Scottish pastor who was blind and single all his life: “My God, I have never thanked Thee for my thorns. I have thanked Thee a thousand times for my roses, but not once for my thorns. I have been looking forward to a world where I shall get compensation for my cross: but I have never thought of my cross as itself a present glory. Teach me the glory of my cross; teach me the value of my thorn.”