Christianity isn’t a bed of roses… or is it?
Consider a rose bush. The first thing you notice is that it’s strikingly beautiful. God loving us so much that he paid the debt we couldn’t. Grace that we don’t deserve freely given. A beautiful hope for an eternity in sharp contrast to this dark, hopeless world we live in. It is also enduring. A rose bush taller than me grows outside my house. It’s older than I am- there as long as my father can remember, and probably older than him too. It has been transplanted at least three times, and it kept on thriving even after the shock, producing softball-sized flowers, the likes of which I’ve never seen elsewhere. But something we don’t often think about is this: if you want to handle a rose, you have to deal with thorns. We have created a church where people are content to look, but not touch. They revel in the beauty of the rose bush, but avoid engaging it directly. Few people go through the effort of digging a hole to plant a clipping, spend the time to care for it so it produces blossoms, or even merely get close enough to have to worry about thorns. No, instead we like roses that someone else grew, cut from the bush with their thorns clipped off (because, after all, thorns are terribly uncomfortable). Our American rose is put in a crystal vase to make it all the prettier, but there is a dire problem. In the process of making it more appealing to the eye, easier to handle, and convenient to obtain, it has been disconnected from its root. It has the semblance of something living, but it is, in reality, dead. Dead. The beauty will fade, and perhaps most sadly of all, its purpose will never be fulfilled. It will be thrown away and forgotten.
The greater part of the American church is content to sit in padded pews and hear a pleasing message. Many may give and serve, but only to the point that it doesn’t interfere with their comfortable lifestyle. They have a form of righteousness, but deny its power. As pretty as a rose in a crystal vase, seemingly full of life, but so disconnected from the will of God. And because of that, though it looks pretty, that church cannot fulfill its purpose.
But for those blessed few that cultivate their own bushes, who aren’t afraid of labor and dirt and thorns, their roses return year after year. Their roses have purpose in their beauty: to produce seeds and multiply. That rose bush, connected firmly to the root, endures.
