I did battle with my roses today. They just don’t understand that pruning them is for their own good, so they fought back and I have plenty of battle scars to prove it. Now that they are all shaped up and have plenty of room to breathe, they should add lots of blooms in the next few weeks to show off their new look. I think we are friends again, but I will keep my distance none-the-less!
I don’t know what it is about roses, but I just love, love, love them. I can’t grow my favorites, like the tea and cabbage roses as they just can’t survive the region I live in and die away from disease or pests. I guess that they are just too delicate. What I can grow are the old fashioned antiques, like the Knock Out family of roses and one of my favorites, Belinda’s Dream, which is not an antique but beats all the odds! Belinda’s Dream is a fast growing shrub that has few disease problems, is covered with a bluish-green foliage and simply lovely, double pink blossoms. All that and a rich, distinctive fragrance too.
After the battle was done I was picking up the waste and I noticed how incredibly abundant and sharp the thorns were. I could hardly handle them, even with a gloved hand, without being stabbed. Just yesterday I watched a group of songbirds fussing and flying about in that bush and wondered how in the world they could land on those hazardous branches without being pierced. They would fly about from branch to branch, so I know they were not ensnared in the bush, they either were not affected for some reason or they were so caught up in the argument that they didn’t feel them.
I then thought of the Easter story and how before Jesus’ crucifixion, the Roman soldiers thrust a “crown of thorns” onto Jesus head. I can’t even fathom how painful that must have been. Jesus was mocked three times by Roman soldiers who placed a crown of thorns upon his head. To the Roman soldiers the title of King was laughable.
But wait, there’s more. According to scripture and BibleHistory.com:
“Then the governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. "Hail, king of the Jews!" they said. They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. Matt. 27:27-30
Mathew, Mark and John report in their gospels that when Pilate handed Jesus over to the soldiers, they brutally scourged him, probably using the infamous Roman Flagrum, a multi-thonged whip embedded with sharp pieces of lead, metal or bone designed to remove flesh.
After the scourging, the soldiers had a bit of sadistic fun with the bleeding savior, mocking his claims of Kingship by dressing him up with a scarlet robe, placing a staff in his hand, as if it were a king’s scepter, and cruelly creating a crown from a thorn bush and pressing it into his scalp. They kneeled before Him in sarcasm saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!”
His crown of thorns, the crown that fallen humanity placed on his head was an awful symbol showing man’s complete contempt for all that God loves and values. It was also emblematic of our Saviors love for all of us and our minds which are deceived and pained by so much of this world’s lies. Perhaps it is also a vicarious witness that he bore the very thorns created by man’s original sin and rebellion in the garden, so that we might one day wear the crown of life and glory. (James 1:12, Rev. 2:10, 1 Peter 5:4)”
I eagerly await the day to embrace Christ and give him my humble “thank you”. Thank you for suffering for me, thank you for choosing me, thank you for saving me, and thank you for roses, whose thorns remind me of Your sacrifice and whose beauty remind me of unimaginable, incredible love that is mine because You are.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." -John 3:16
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