Matthew's Thorns

Editor's note:  I started writing this back in November, then got busy.  Jose aka 'Twomedicineman' prodded me because I haven't posted a blog in a while - and I remembered this, sitting unfinished on my laptop.  So here I am, picking up where I left off... 

This past weekend, we had a spiritual retreat, a “silent” retreat in which the folks participating are not supposed to talk from Friday evening till church at 11 Sunday morning.  This is the second such retreat I’ve been involved in, and, like  the first, there were some awakenings within.

Set the stage… Last Sunday evening, Pastor Bob met with us to give us a background…  It is a reading, a parable, from Matthew 13…

"A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

So Bob told us to consider these words, and then… don’t do the obvious – “Which ground am I???”  but instead consider that “I am… all of them”.  And what percentage of us are represented by  each one of us these things?  We were given fifteen or twenty minutes of quiet time to ponder this, to meditate, as it were... and then came back as a group to share (if we so desired) our thoughts on the subject.

For me, my initial short-term reaction was to quantify these things within me… Where I am today, but also, where I was, say, five years ago.  Some of the things, to me, meant things totally different than they did to other people…. We have the will and the freedom to interpret things our own ways… I won’t tell you what my answers were.  That isn’t important.  What is important is that the good things are growing once again inside of me.  (But why don't YOU share your thoughts, if you care to..)

Other people in the same group had very thoughtful answers, but so different from my own.  Obviously, the ‘fertile ground’ is the place for growth, and what grows there can produce “a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown.”  But what signified ‘good soil’?  Or for that matter, what in our daily lives can be signified by the path, or thorns, or rocky places?

I would highly recommend this exercise… Take some quiet time, ponder it, think about what it means to you.  Quantify it… what percentage of you is fertile soil, vs. the other alternatives?

Back to this weekend’s retreat…  I had my camera with me and kept finding myself drawn to the oddest of things.  Like a thorn on a wild rosebush, with a bit of vine curled up next to it.  I took a photo of it, a macro closeup.

Thorns of a rosebush

Thorn of a rosebush with a little tendril of vine, complete with shadow!

There were other things I kept finding myself drawn to… But mostly, at that moment, thorns.

Funny thing is, I saw an ‘apple’ (or something that looked like one) stuck up in amongst some thorns in what appeared to be a locust tree…

Apple-like 'fruit' up in the tree... there were a couple of them, but I am not sure what kind of tree it was.

More thorns - definitely a locust of some sort.

I saw red berries, interspersed with thorns…

Hawthorn, I think?

There are those thorns again… all over the place… Much like the song, Every rose has its thorn.

But roses are beautiful, you say, and thorns are ugly.  I say, thorns are NOT ugly – they are a part of the natural beauty of the landscape. Much like life, there are things that cause us pain, but they can be accompanied by the roses, as well.  Sometimes we have to pay attention to what we'd ordinarily ignore to truly appreciate what we have.  That maybe doesn't make much sense, but I know what I mean.

So then… what of our parable?  It talks of seeds falling amongst the thorns (as if that’s a bad thing, and perhaps, it is… but the thorns CAN be nice…)  I won't continue my thoughts, here, now... but if you comment enough, and leave enough feedback to show me that someone is interested in the subject, I'll follow up this post with another one... delving into my initial reactions and answers to the problem posed... and then my very different reactions and thoughts that were reached at the end of the retreat.  

But that'll wait for another day... for now, I hope you've enjoyed sharing my 'thorns' with me.  :)