September 06, 2007
Sticking Together
The path I take on my daily walk goes past a neighbor’s desert garden of cactus and rocks. This spring I watched four stinging nettles as they inched their way up through a group of tightly packed barrel cactus. The nettles were no match for the cactus. Trying to avoid the cactus needles, the stems of the nettles became bent and distorted. I’ll have to admit that I loved watching the thistles get a dose of their own medicine before they withered and died. Too bad Christians aren’t as tightly packed together as the barrel cactus – the thorns of the world wouldn’t stand a chance.
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Gail;
-----I always thought of cactus needles as being a defense against animals and insects. I never realized they could be effective against other plants. And as I read your blog, I began to wonder what it was about their way of growing that they could pack together so tightly without the needles having the same detrimental effect upon each other. Maybe it is some sort of recognition they have for their own kind. I know plants do communicate with each other by the release of chemicals (for a tree to get from the tree next door a “Howdy” back to its “Good morning,” it would have to wait for the wind to shift.) So maybe there is some chemical awareness or something that says, “Hey, ease up on the needles over here, Pal, and I will keep you company.”
-----All of us who belong to the Lord have been given a marker by which we are able to discern each other. The Holy Spirit produces its fruit with a distinctive quality in the heart of the humble Christian. The smell and the taste are sweet and right. But being humble is hard to do. We get going so fast and hard on what we are sure the Lord wants in our life, and we get so excited when we see Him producing some benefit through us, that we forget His relationship with us is individual and personal. We start to slip from humility to arrogance as we begin to think that what He is doing in our life is what He wants to be doing in everyone else’s life as well. So the fruit He tries to grow in us for the feeding of those close by begins to take on a flavor and smell a bit too much like the individual, and a bit too less like the Lord.
-----They say about the fox that he can not smell his own den. It is usually in reference to the fact that the other fox can smell his neighbor’s den. Although we smell pretty good to ourselves, it is only because of our individuality. I assure you, we do not smell that good to others. So, let me venture a guess about why maybe we Christians do not pack together tightly enough to overcome the local growths of thistles and nettles. Maybe we are getting too much of our own chemistry mixed into the fruit the Spirit grows in us. Maybe the flavor has taken on a pungent quality by the presence of arrogance. With a bit more humility, the flavor of the fruit might return to sweet, and the neighbors might scoot a little closer.
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