by Jennibean

Created on: June 24, 2008

A Lily Among Thorns

As I write this, I sense that there are people out there today who feel unworthy. Ugly. Inadequate. I started to write on a completely different subject, but I feel the Lord was leading me to give you a different word today. You'll notice that I titled this journal "a lily among thorns." I want you to picture for a moment what that might look like. You might picture something beautiful in the middle of something unattractive and intimidating. If you were to encounter a lily surrounded by stalks of thorns, you might think twice about picking the lily because it's simply too hard to navigate through the thorns around it without getting hurt. You may not even see the lily because the thorns are so thick around it. The best parts are all choked out by years of overgrowth and ugliness. The lily seems untouchable, so you pass it over and keep walking in favor of one that is more attractive and approachable.

You may feel like the human embodiment of the lily. Like you are untouchable, and no one can see the beauty in you under all the thorns. You may have been surrounded by thorns for so long that you no longer feel beautiful or worthy of being picked. You may have been passed over time and time again, just wishing someone would stop and try harder to find the real you under all the ugliness. You may even find yourself wishing that someone cared enough to come prune away the overgrowth, because you are lost in it and simply don't have the provisions or know-how that it takes to rid yourself of it on your own.

How lucky we are that God is a master gardener! No matter how much sin and sorrow surrounds us, He is not content to pass us by and leave us engulfed in it. Many people will keep on walking because they are often not equipped with the tools to eliminate the forest of pain that surrounds us. It's a matter of the heart, and only God is capable of such a masterful work. In the times that we feel we are at our ugliest, and no one could possibly love us or want us, He reminds us that He loves us and that we are worthy by placing the holy shears of His word in the hands of a loving gardener. He has an army of apt horticulturists walking the earth who aren't intimidated by the thorns and ugliness of our sin and transgressions. They are the recipients and distributors of God's unconditional love. Song of Songs 1:5 says, "Dark am I, yet lovely." This is how the Lord sees us. How do we know? In Song of Songs 2:2, He says, "Like a lily among the thorns

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