Skip to main content

Prickly Disposition

Prickly Disposition
Excerpt from Gardens of the Heart

Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you. Ephesians 4:32 NLT
 
And so blessing and cursing come pouring out of the same mouth. Surely, my brothers and sisters, this is not right! Does a spring of water bubble out with both fresh water and bitter water? James 3:10,11 NLT

 

 
There are many varieties of cactus, and the blooms are gorgeous.  There’s even a cactus that blooms for one night and then it’s over. Called the Night Blooming Cereus or Queen of the Night, it produces a spectacular white star-like flower.   The Claret Cup is another showy variety with deep red cup-like blooms. 

Despite their beauty, as everyone knows, there’s a very specific problem with cacti.  It’s their nasty thorns.  And not all thorns are the same.  Some have wicked long ones that are easy to see and some have more subtle thorns.  They’re small and even look like a soft fuzzy covering on some of the paddles.  Don’t be fooled!  Those are some of the worst kind.  Once on your hand, they quickly work their way underneath the skin, making it almost impossible to get them out.  If you live in the desert, you learn to keep a safe distance from these succulents. There are other succulents that are thornless.  One of the common varieties is the ice plant.  It’s an excellent groundcover, full of brilliantly colored flowers throughout the season.  It attracts butterflies and bees and poses no harm to anyone who would touch it.

Christians can sometimes be like cacti—a mixture of thorns and beauty that keep everyone at a distance.  But that’s not how it’s supposed to be.  Are you sweet on Sunday and mean on Monday?  Our dispositions should be sweet every day and not full of thorny comments or harmful gossip.  Get rid of the thorns and bloom for all you’re worth.

 
In the Garden Succulents are easy to grow and require little attention.  Hen and Chicks is one of the most common, and you can find it at your local nursery.  Plant a Hen in a rock garden or a sunny spot with lean soil and watch the Chicks appear.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Castile Knapper

It's always fun to have family members who have a bit of notoriety because of interesting pursuits. My husband's cousin, Ken Wallace is one of those.  Ken is an artist who works in stone as a flintknapper. Flintknapping is the ancient art of shaping tools and weapons from pieces of stone. Knapping was part of the survival skill set of Native Americans. Arrowheads, knives, hatchets, and more were shaped from raw pieces of flint or chert.  Ken knapping at the Wallace Reunion Ken became interested in this process back in 1985. One of his favorite pastimes was searching fields for arrowheads, both of which are pretty plentiful in Western New York. Freshly plowed ground in rural areas often yields many different types of arrowheads since the Iroquois were the original residents of what are now corn fields and cow pastures. Fascinated with how the Iroquois made their weapons and tools, Ken started to try and recreate them. He says a lot of trial and error were involved in the...

Victim of Circumstances?

 The article below has been getting a lot of hits lately, and I thought it may be time to repost it. A couple of weeks ago, I took the picture below. I thought it pretty much sums up our life journey. We never know what's around the corner for us.  Circumstances change in seconds some days. Whether the circumstances of life are good or bad, we're fond of blaming them for how we behave and think. Here are a few of the well-used excuses:  "I'm a victim of circumstances.""The situation is impossible." "The circumstances are beyond my control." "Under the circumstances"...fill in the blank. Funny how principles, self-control, and  positive thinking can go out the window when we're "under the circumstances."  And lest you think the author is above blaming circumstances, she is not. I've used most of the excuses above, whether spoken or unspoken.  An imprisoned and wrongly accused Jewish C...

Smores Anyone?

We lived in the same house for 25 years just outside of our small hometown of Castile. It was a good little neighborhood and was mostly quiet except for the traffic on Route 39. When the signs of spring arrived, it was also time to pile up tree branches, and clean out the garage or the shed of burnable miscellany. Each year there seemed to be a contest between my husband and the next door neighbor to assemble a burn pile of enormous proportions.  Day after day I watched their piles grow until tepee-shaped woodpiles were just right to be torched. There was an art to the arrangement so that it would be totally consumed in a short amount of time. It was sort of like a bonfire on steroids. Now the neighbor enjoyed the element of surprise on the neighborhood and waited for quiet Saturday afternoons to begin his incendiary activity. KABOOM! You would have thought we were under attack by enemy forces. Then there was a rush of wind and the crackling of the k...