Thorns

I learned how to strip flower stems today at work, in a florist, and it struck me how large thorns can be. One of the other employees remarked how your fingers are usually green and sometimes red after stripping flowers because every once in a while you will get blood mixed in with the green goo on your hands.

This brought Jesus Christ to my mind. Christ had a crown of thorns placed on his head, and as I have learned through many theological classes and teachings, these thorns were huge, not like a rose thorn. They were vines of hard long thorns wrapped together in row upon row of pointed thorns going in all directions and then placed on Jesus' head quite roughly so they poked deep into his skin and tissues. I know how much my rough skinned hands hurt when a sharp rose thorn enters my skin, I can't imagine the thin delicate skin of my face and scalp being violated with large spikey thorns on all sides.

The sacrifice Christ made was not just one of love, but of self. He lost all sense of dignity and privacy and control when he was crucified, which is interesting since He is in control of this whole world. As the Son of God He could have kept himself from going through that kind of humiliation and suffering, but he chose to make sacrifices for us, to save us from our sins and then show His power by rising again on the third day to prepare our place in Heaven.

Thorns, they make thier statement quietly and painfully. What way do we make our statements?