Summer in the Briars
It seems I may spend my whole summer in briars.
It started a few weeks ago when Emma and I cleared a path in our back woods for a walking trail. When we finished, we were both covered in angry scratches and smarting cuts and painful thorn-pricks.
A few weeks later, Steven and I worked in some flowerbeds that had not been tended in awhile. Briars were growing up in the middle of hydrangeas, winding through hostas. And so we clipped and pulled and sprayed to get rid of them.
Then just this past weekend, we were working in Emma’s yard and encountered some of the largest, densest briars I’ve ever seen, including an 8 ft. tall briar tree!
Most of these briars, filled with thorns, will eventually produce blackberries - and those I love. I remember as a child walking around our neighborhood, picking blackberries by the lake to make blackberry cobbler. And while this cobbler is one of my favorite things, the blackberry briars are most definitely not!
It’s a fact: every blackberry briar comes with both painful thorns and sweet fruit.
It’s a lot like life.
If you’re facing thorns in your life right now, entangled in briars that seem intent on hurting you, take heart! The patch may eventually result in a harvest of fruit. Just as you can’t have blackberries without thorns, you can’t have joy without challenges.
There have been times in my life when I’ve been so entangled by thorny branches that I couldn’t see a way out – just more briars. But most often, when I finally come through to a sweet moment, I can look back and see the rugged trail through the briar patch where I chopped and chopped to make a way out. And it doesn’t seem nearly as bad when I’m tasting the fruit, because it was worth it.
God always wants us to get to the fruit. He walks beside us as we thin out the briars, cut away a path and maybe get stuck by a few thorns. But in the end, He celebrates the sweet, ripe fruit with us. It’s worth the trouble.
So today if you feel like you’re living in the midst of a tangled, thorny patch, keep whacking away, thinning out it out, and watching for the first hints of sweet fruit.
Then preheat your oven - your blackberry cobbler may be soon on the way…