A Promise to Thorns--November 22, 2023

A Promise to Thorns--November 22, 2023

“…just as God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” [Ephesians 1:4]

I planted a rosebush once—oh, this has been more than a decade ago or more now—before I had seen what its blossoms would look like.

I had the space to put a rosebush, and I had the desire to have one there, and so one day off I went to the store, picked one out that had already blossomed for the summer, and put it in the ground. I chose it.

That is saying something, because I really did choose it. I selected that specific rose, among lots of other roses that were there at our local Lowe’s. Some of them were later-blooming varieties, too, and so I could have seen what they would produce. I could have had one knowing it would yield big deep red blossoms or fragile white ones. I could have known exactly what I was getting when I bought it, and seen exactly how it would look in full bloom from the very day I planted it.

I did not do it that way. Instead, before I had laid eyes on a single blossom on that plant, I chose it. And from that moment on, I made a sort of promise to it—it is my rose, and my job is to cultivate it so that it will blossom as beautifully and fully as possible. I made that commitment—to the extent one can make a commitment to a flowering plant—apart from anything the plant had done for me, and really without any guarantees of what it would do for me. As much as you can love a plant, I loved it. I loved the rosebush even though, at the time I planted it, all it had done to that point was jab me with thorns and scratch my forearms—that’s not much to go on, and hardly anything positive.

Instead of poring over all the blossoming choices in the greenhouse, I saw that one, checked what kind of shade and sun it could handle, and was ready to go. It took all of a few minutes, because I went in knowing I was going to get a rose. That may seem foolish. But that is how I buy things—I am also the guy who takes seven minutes or less to buy shoes generally because my goal is just to get something that looks as close to identical as possible to the shoes I have just worn out.

So… why, would you say, did I buy the rose? What was my reason for planting it? I think you have to say something like this: first off, I just claimed it as my own as it was, before it had done a thing to impress me. You could say that I bought and planted that rose in the hopes of what it would become one day when it did blossom, but not that I got it because of what it had done already. I loved it before it had become anything other than a clump of sharp sticks and some roots. There had not been any blossoms yet to wow me or grab my attention. There were only thorns and a few leaves... and my self-made promise that this would be my rosebush. But that was it.

The truth now—you are the rose bush.

You are the rose bush, and so am I. And God is the One who has bought us, claimed us in love, and chosen us from among a greenhouse full of shelves. In Christ, God the Father saw us when all we had to our credit was the scratching and wounding of Jesus. All there was on our record were thorns—and that is hardly positive. But God chose us anyhow. Before we had done a good deed. Before we had prayed any prayers, sung any hymns, or made any decisions for Jesus, Jesus had made a decision for us. He chose us—as we were, as we are, and yet also with a vision of what we might become because of our chosen-ness. And so, from before the foundation of the world—before we had even been planted in the soil of God’s good earth—God determined to claim us, to love us forever, and to cultivate beauty and life in us. You could call it a promise God made with himself—after all, we weren’t on the scene yet even to hear it! It was a promise made over us even when all we had to offer were our thorns, and yet the promise itself planted us securely in the household of God so that we would put forth blossoms in time.  

This is what God's kind of unending love makes possible.

This is what the gospel of Jesus is all about—how God’s love chose us in Christ before we had done a thing, and how that love makes it possible for us to become something more than brittle branches and thorns. “My song is love unknown, my Savior’s love for me—love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be,” goes the old hymn. Sounds like the way God buys rose bushes.

Now, a second bit of truth is in order—it is a humbling thing to recognize that you have been chosen apart from anything you did or didn’t do. And it can be a difficult thing for us proud, independently-minded people to allow ourselves to be loved that way, and to know that it depends not on our behavior or our being perfect peaches, but on God’s self-sworn promise to himself to love our thorns into roses.

This is how you and I have been loved—from before time began.

This is how you are loved still—right at this very moment, as I write these words and at whatever time you read them.

This is how you will be loved always—what will you let that love do for you, in you, and through you today?

Lord God, we can scarcely take in the beauty and breadth of your love for us. But as we find ourselves found by your sovereign and gracious love, let us be changed by the power of your love. Make us to blossom, as you have known all along that we could.