Thoughts On Roots and Thorns

First, many thanks to Donald both for posting for me Wednesday and for fixing my severed telephone cord.

Two observations I made about roots while gardening this week:

First, Did you know that an underground telephone cord looks exactly like a root?

That’s why I cut my cord in two places removing a six-foot section of it and shutting down my own internet access.

Could happen to anybody. Right?

Second, if you see roots move, they are a snake.

We scared each other then went our separate ways.

Now, on to today’s diary entry:



Tuesday a friend who watched me garden asked, “Why in the world do you plant sticker bushes right under your windows”?

I explained that my intention is to make it easier for a burglar to rob his house that to rob mine.

Alarm systems only begin to work after a thief has broken in; my intention is to discourage anyone from even approaching our windows.

I plant wicked thorn bushes around every window. One of my favorite plants for home security is the bougainvillea vine. The photo above, from a home around the corner, shows the lovely decorative flowers. The photo below shows the tiny delicate thorns protecting our windows silhouetted against my thick glove:



Bougainvillea vines bite.

Here is a photo of my arm after transplanting one vine while wearing thick rubberized protective gloves:



And I knew about the thorns and wore protective gloves.

If a determined thief claws past those things, I doubt if the other elements of our security system would stop him. But the whole idea is to encourage him to rob someplace else instead of our house.

While I worked I remembered a joke (it has nothing to do with anything else in this journal entry) I haven’t thought of since I was a Boy Scout:

This drunk is walking through a cemetery and falls into an open grave ready for a funeral the next day.
He yells for help but no one answers.
He leaps and jumps and tries to climb out but the grave is too deep and the sides too steep. So he curls up at one end of the grave and goes to sleep thinking somebody will come by in the morning to help him out.
A couple of hours later after the bars close, another drunk takes the same shortcut through the cemetery and falls into the other end of the same open grave.
He yells and leaps and jumps and tries to climb the sides.
His activity wakes the first man who walks up behind him, taps him on the shoulder and says, “Hey, Buddy. Give it up. You can’t jump out of this grave”.
But he did.

My friend Wes came over to take me to lunch. We talked about personal concerns for ourselves and various people we care about. And we also had a long talk about the last chapter of John’s Gospel about things Jesus said after He rose from the grave. Wes, who has a legal turn of mind, pointed out that this passage meets all the criteria as a legal document which would stand up in a courtroom today.

After he left, I got to thinking more about thorns and my Spring garden work again.

The Bible says, “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed…And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it”.

Considering the work I’ve done in our little garden the past couple of days and considering all the work that still needs doing, to me this Bible passage proves conclusively that God knew from the word Go, that the work of dressing and keeping a garden is a never ending task!

Why else did He create man?

Kidding aside, thorns are just one physical effect of sin.

God told Adam, “Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee…”
I think it odd that this effect is “for thy sake”.

Taken one way the phrase seems to mean “because of you”; in another sense, the phrase seems to mean “for your benefit”.

And that makes no sense to me — especially after my day among the thorns.

What possible benefit can there be to us in thorns?

Of course the Lord Jesus is well acquainted with thorns.

We crowned Him with them.

That was also for our sake.

But anyhow, gardening is rough, back-breaking physical work!

And I’m not used to it.

In fact, if the rest of my body were as stiff as my calves, thighs, shoulders, arms, back and neck, then the Viagra company would go out of business.