PRIMROSE PROVERBS

After a much-too-snowy winter (like the night of a record two-foot snowfall!), my husband was eager to welcome spring by planting some primroses by our front walk. Their name comes from the Latin prim for “first” (as in first of spring), and their compact growing pattern and bright colors always cheer. Sometimes they make me think of the phrase “Primrose Path,” which I long associated with some ultra-lovely garden. Maybe that's because our English word “prim” (for a very proper and demure person) comes from that word in French. Still, I'd envision lovely gardens with all the rainbow's colors, artfully planted, and probably primroses lining a flagstone walkway. Perhaps there's such a garden somewhere, but not in our hot climate. Primroses grow best in damp, wooded-like conditions. If that sends your imagination to fairies, you probably recall this 1916 children's song:

White coral bells upon a slender stock. Lilies of the valley deck my garden walk. Oh, don't you wish that you could hear them ring, That will happen only when the fairies sing.

Sorry, but primroses didn't make it into these song lyrics, as least from what I researched. Instead, they have a darker reputation tracing back to Shakespeare's plays. In Hamlet, Ophelia's brother Laertes is lecturing her how to behave while he's away at a university in Paris. She turns his advice around, warning him to behave himself since fellow students have quite a negative moral reputation. Her warning (in that quaint Old English):

Show me the steep and stormy way to heaven whiles like a puffed and reckless libertine himself the primrose path of dalliance treads and recks not his own rede. (Hamlet, 1.3).

Shakespeare's audiences understood Ophelia's worry that such behavioral paths led to bad outcomes. Because this was the era of the King James Bible, no doubt audiences also knew the Bible's warning about the moral gate that led to destruction (Matthew 7:13). Over centuries, that allusion led to to the contemporary meaning of “Primrose Path” as “a life of pleasure and leisure that results in a negative or detrimental outcome.” (1) In other words, it's the easy way out but it has its hidden costs.

I pick up the same theme throughout the book of Proverbs. Maybe King Solomon was writing out of his disastrous experiences with the world's biggest pagan harem when he penned advice that warned against following paths that led away from God. The most vivid example is in chapter 7, where a guy is dawdling along a street when a brazen immoral woman lures him into her home. Verse 22 is chilling: “All at once he followed her...little knowing it will cost him his life.”

I once heard it said that when someone is faced with temptation, he or she should imagine Jesus watching from a nearby corner. Would He be pleased or grieved by your choice? Writing to believers in the immoral city of Corinth, Paul had similar advice:

If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall. (1 Corinthians 10:12)

He added that temptations are out there. They're a common thing in our human existence. But in keeping God in such situations, “when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). To borrow a modern phrase, He will help us just say NO!

In contrast to the “Primrose Path” (in its historical meaning of pleasure leading to harm) is “the path of the righteous [which] is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day” (Proverbs 4:18).

I have to be honest: all this historical background saddened me! I enjoy our garden primroses. But checking out a garden-variety allusion reminded me of the higher calling to submit to the Lord's spiritual landscaping plan for my life.

(1) a life of pleasure and leisure that results in a negative or detrimental outcome. - Search (bing.com)

Fifty shades of yellow

 

Unseasonably warm days have brought early spring to my area.  I haven’t shoveled snow in weeks, and crocus blossoms have popped at a sunny spot in my son’s yard. Those happy little blooms always remind me of this portion of Song of Solomon:
See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come. (Song of Solomon 2:11)
Especially for those who live in climates where gray winter days drag on, it’s a happy day when flowers appear again.
 

Okay, I know that “Song of Solomon” can be read at several levels, one being a sensual poem between a man and his betrothed. But rather than the reported raunchy stuff of a current “gray”-named  film (which I have not seen nor plan to see), this is the pure marital love of God’s original plan for men and women,  all the way back to Adam and Eve. On another level, this verse reminds us that temptations and hardships (“the winter”) aren’t forever. As 1 Corinthians 10:13 points out:

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.  And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
God knows how much “winter” we can endure spiritually. Renewal and hope—like fifty shades of early spring flowers--can come as we walk in trust and obedience to God.

Our early spring has reminded me of another recent film, about winter, which has spawned more than its share of child-focused merchandise. This cartoon took liberties with a fairy tale about a young queen cursed with turning everything she touched into frozen deadness.  She decides to abandon her kingdom and go as far away as possible to the ultimate frozen land.  With her long white tresses, oversized eyes, and Barbie-doll figure, she seems to have everything “right.” But she reminds me of spoiled little kids who stomp off to their rooms when life doesn’t go their way, slamming the door behind them.  The real heroine of the film was her boy-crazy sister, who broke the “ice curse” with an act of sacrificial love. Yet the “ice queen” and her sister were both flawed beings and not true to real life. Real life is this:

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.(Romans 5:8)
Our “sin” state left us stuck in a spiritual winter. But Jesus’ sacrificial death for our sins made it possible for us to have new spiritual life. 

Let those crocuses push through the mat of dead leaves!  In all their buttery glory, they’re the advance scouts for spring’s most magnificent event: Easter.

Bugged

Talk about an end-of-season party! This was the gathering atop my stove in September. I had supplied the “refreshments” (a disk with ant-yummy poison), so had essentially invited this large number of “guests.” A few weeks later, the early winter frosts came, reducing the number of critters who paid social calls in my kitchen. One day, I told my husband, “I didn’t see a single ant today. Did you?” I’m glad for the winter reprieve, but I know when the weather warms, our uninvited guests (most likely their offspring) will return.

Isn’t that like life? We wonder if things can get any worse, and mercifully, a reprieve comes. Or, we’ll find the strength and grace to get through a difficult situation. That’s the point of one verse in Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth. In my Bible it’s underlined and highlighted in yellow such that it almost glows in the dark. Are you getting the idea that I’ve needed its message more than once? Here it is:

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. (1 Corinthians 10:13 NIV)

For a long time I thought “temptation” implied being lured into the seven cardinal sins, like greed and lust. Then I looked up the Greek word that most Bibles translate “temptation.” It’s peirasmos and its primary meaning is “trials with a beneficial purpose and effect,” divinely permitted or sent. Or as Bible teacher Kay Arthur often says, nothing can come into our lives that is not filtered through the fingers of God’s love. It’s bigger than being faced with obvious sin choices. It’s choosing God’s way when our lives are touched by temptations, difficult circumstances or relationships.

I needed that reminder the other day when faced with a peirasmos in relationships calling for an extra dose of patience and grace. It crawled all over my emotions, like partying ants on a disk of poison. Then God, though my scripture reading and the counsel of friends, helped me through it. Will that difficulty revisit? In this case, probably--but only because God permits it. He knows that each time I get through a periasmos, my character is honed, preparing me for my eventual Home with Him.

“Go to the ant,” says Proverbs 6:6, as part of its warnings against idleness. But in this case, I “go to the ant” for a reminder that no matter the irritation or struggle, God is greater. Pardon the pun, but I don’t need to get “antsy,” knowing He’s in control.