A female friend of mine in Vegas had a birthday this week but refused to tell me what day it was. I bought her flowers anyway. Originally, we were supposed to meet up Tuesday night, which turned out to be the day before her birthday, but she had to hurry off for something, and so the flowers sat in my house and then in my car until I finally got them to her last night. By then, they didn’t look as pretty, because I hit them with heat and with other things, but they still smelt amazing. Apparently she liked them better than roses, for the smell as well as for the absence of rose thorns, and I started to think about what roses mean and why people feel as they do about them.
One cliché that comes to mind is that we should be grateful that thorns have roses. There is some truth in this. Over the years, I have learned much about thorny, flowering plants. When you neglect them and they go wild, the vines will bramble, producing many thorns but very few flowers and fruits. Some berry varieties don’t make fruit at all unless you cut them. When my friend trimmed back his roses back in March, the bushes exploded with blooms so much so that his backyard is now full of bees! There is a principle in this, that without proper care, most of these plants bring forth very little fruit.
I know lots of people who quit early. Of the eight students I lost this term, seven of them quit because they were unwilling to pay the price. I suppose that’s for the best that we discover that now, but people who quit early never see fruits. I know lots of people who love to plant roses, my ex-wife included, who don’t want to take care of them, ibid. We all want to have things, but not enough sometimes to provide the nurturing care necessary to train them and work on them when the brambles of life appear in order to enjoy the blooms. Sure, we all love when people hand us flowers in bloom without taking much thought to the effort that went into cultivating, harvesting, and transporting the flowers. We pay the $29.99 to an online flower service and they just magically appear!
Tragically people do this far too often with other people. At the beginning, everything seems wonderful and we love the blooms because we get to see other people at their very best. Eventually, that bloom falls off, and we stare at the thorny bush that remains and wonder how we ever liked it in the first place. We think it’s become something else. The thorns are part of it. Just as natural roses do not have varieties void of thorns, normal people have their weaknesses as well as their strengths. During times of trial, we focus on the thorns in other people, and far too many people claim they “love” another only to flee when the wolves come. What we sometimes forget is that with the proper care and feeding of relationships the thorny vine can produce roses again.
The natural state of things is chaos. The natural state of things is that life is hard. It was meant to be that way God told Adam for our sake, to turn us to God and His Christ for help. This arrangement helps us discover what really matters to us because it asks us to stick with things to the end when we claim they really matter to us. By the sweat of our brow we eat our bread, and as we nurture and prune and tame and persist with the thorny vine it eventually bears fruit again. Each time we stick with something through the pruning season, we have the promise that there will be a harvest of beautiful flowers and succulent fruits for our efforts. Yes, the roses and the thorns come together, but it is not sad that roses have thorns but a boon that thorny vines also bear roses.
My mother taught me when I was young that anything worth doing was worth doing well. Consequently, when the going gets tough, I don’t quit. I dig in my heels and grunt with effort hoping and praying that things will work out as I like. Sometimes my endeavors fade quickly in the heat of the moment or under constant assault from outside forces, and sometimes the blooms fall off and reveal only the thorny bush. As I did with my yard, I continue to strive with things, knowing that sometimes I have brought back plants and opportunities from the brink of ruin and that if other people continue to stick with it our thorny bush can bear fruit again. We know the blooms, and we recognize their scent, and we know that it will be worth it if our efforts bear the fruit for which we hope. The thorns can give way to roses once more, and that provides us the hope to try again, the plant again, to work with renewed vigor towards the harvest. Sometimes we must put up with the thorns in order to be worthy of roses and to enjoy their fragrance and beauty in our lives. Only those willing to look past and go beyond them usually benefit from lasting blooms in their future. For the rest, I suppose there’s the internet and the low low price of $29.95 each time.
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