Thorns and Thistles

Any time, any place, any where in the world that I have visited, that I have read so much about, my mind swarms with memories. Such was the case when I visited Notre Dame in Paris for the first time. I walked down the main aisle to the front and looked at the great Rose window. But, most of all, I thought of my translation in college French class of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Victor Hugo wrote many great works of literature, perhaps his greatest words, “adversity makes men.”

Mine has been a hard life, there were times when I envied those who have had such a soft life...no thorns, no thistles, no problems, just a carefree existence. Then, I met men and women who had had a hard life, their paths full of challenge. The rocky road is what made them what they are, usually men and women of character. The Garden, was a romantic existence, free of problems, free of work. But, because God gave us free will, man rebelled, and we have the thorns and thistles introduced to our living. Thorns and thistles, problems of life, are a real challenge. Thorns represent sin, just as thorns will take over a field, sin will take over a life, a church, a culture, a country. There is nothing pleasant about fighting thorns, the only way you get rid of thorns in the field, around your garden, in your crops, is to just take a bush axe and wail away, then, you rake them up and burn them.

Life is a matter of fighting sin/thorns in your own living, the sin/thorns involving your family, sin/thorns invading your church, sin/thorns taking over your government. With God's help, you do what you do because you believe what you believe, depending on God to do the rest. He will eventually get rid of the sin/thorns of the earth with fire.

One thing that has amazed me in my life, is the ability of people to get knocked down by catastrophe, disease, despair, but to get right up and start all over. The capacity of the human spirit to overcome adversity is a mystery to every psychologist and psychiatrist in the world. But, trees that can overcome thorn bushes, just think of the magnificence of trees, what they contribute to mankind: lumber to build things, fruit for food, medicine, syrup, shade. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. (Isaiah 55:13)

It is only when you compare the useless thorn bushes with productive trees that you understand human nature and the human spirit. I thought of this when I considered the thirty three miners trapped in the San Jose gold/copper mine in Chile. Just think of being trapped that far underground, it takes several months for your retrieval. Everyday, around the world, men go underground in the mining industry, knowing the dangers involved, you would think that such work would have ended long ago. You could say that same thing about many hazardous vocations: airline pilots, military in submarines, or even taxicab drivers. Because of man's love for adventure, and often because of the pay of these hazardous jobs, the brain is wired to take risks. We are evidently wired to overcome defeat, to get up and get over disappointment and despair, to fight thorns and protect trees.

Recently, in Argentina, one couple, so disappointed with the conditions in the world, not willing to carry on. First shot their baby, and then killed themselves. It just so happened that through the grace of God, the baby survived. Suicide has become the way of escape for many young people, particularly members of the military. Many deaths are cleverly disguised for insurance purposes, there are probably more suicides than we know. Fortunately, a man or woman never challenged by the harsh realities of the life and death struggle...who have never seen war, disaster, financial ruin, ravages of disease, dismay of disability. Pray that you will never see the ashes of a home fire, the fresh grave of your child, the flag-draped casket, the smell of critical care unit in the hospital. But when you do, hope that you have the internal fortitude, the capacity within the human spirit to start over.

Each year, $6 billion is lost in home fires in America, fire does not discriminate, the mansion can burn just as the shack, disease does not discriminate, nor does flood, nor does accident. My hard-working parents were distraught after the barn burned, whereas they picked up and started over, they never missed a service in the house of God. As I have written in many commentaries, many jobs as a college student, on weekends I worked at a large cemetery, one Sunday, two baby burial, at the large mausoleum( this is the mausoleum where Elvis was interred until moving him to Graceland). A wealthy family interred their baby in a gold casket, on the other side of the cemetery, the cheapest plot available, another family brought a small baby's casket to the cemetery in a pickup truck. Deaths of two babies, a large limousine hearse carrying a gold casket, small pick up truck carrying a cheap casket, a great difference in what money can do for families, but no difference in the grief of two mothers. In all cases, old/young, rich/poor, you need the grace of God, the spirit of redemption to pick up and keep going, to see you through times of briars, thorns and adversity.

Adversity

I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. (Phillipians 4:13)

If there’s ever been a time in the recent history of this country that the average person is faced with adversity, it is now. Every television and radio program is punctuated by the financial dilemma, not only of the largest financial institutions in the world, but the average American citizen has become completely disillusioned and filled with despair over national and global turmoil in the financial world.

I was born during the Great Depression in 1930, the unemployment rate from 1930-1941 was 18%. It never changed. Automobile production went down 90%. I was just a child, but I can still remember relatives who lost their farms, moving in with other relatives who were trying to hold on to theirs and the stress that killed one Great Aunt as she stood in line all day, trying to get her money out of the bank.

These people had known stress before and they had heard of stress. For instance, my grandmother’s mother was a child during the Civil War. She told how her grandmother took the cows a long distance into the swamps to keep the northern soldiers from taking them as they made their sweep through the community. The only boy survivor in the family, who was about 12, went in another direction with the mules because they knew that if the cows were slaughtered and taken, there would be no milk for the babies or the old people who were sick in the home, and no transportation at all if the mules were taken. The northern troops normally took everything of any value. They cleaned out the smokehouse (smokehouse--an outside building used for the storage of hog meat after it had been cured), all the chickens they could capture were taken and the people were left with just the potatoes, onions, dried fruit, and other items which they had been able to hide.

The house in which my mother was reared, her father before her ,and his father before him and which still stands out in the community, was not burned as were most of the houses and outbuildings in the community, because there were two dead bodies in the living room awaiting burial.

When our forefathers crossed the Great Plains heading west to California often under attack by Indians, survival dictated that they circle the wagons to protect themselves, and their meager possessions such as food, clothing, and ammunition. In this time of global adversity (we have reason to believe that financial conditions in Europe are worse than in the USA) it is probably time for us to circle the wagons as our own personal survival is concerned.

Last nights academy award was given to a movie which tried to glamorize poverty, there is nothing glamorous about poverty. For those of us who have “been there and done that “ but those of us who have seen dire poverty in the world such as India where the movie was made, there is nothing romantic about poverty whether in India, Samoa, or eastern NC. If the area from highway 95 which goes north to south through NC and then east to the coast were a state, it would be the poorest state in the union.

My entire life has been spent studying the poverty of eastern NC, tenant farmers on cotton and tobacco farms and poverty stricken mill workers working in the cotton mills (living in houses and forced to buy goods in mill owned stores) striving to survive on the wages paid by the cotton mill owner families who lived in the big houses on the hill. The tobacco tenant farmers worked like slaves the entire year (in my case for $1 per day as a child) to bring the tobacco to auction warehouses where the product was stolen by the cigarette company conglomerates and the owners of the auction warehouses.

One of my aunts, who worked in the local cotton mill here in Wilmington( Spofford cotton mill) who’s workers houses did not have indoor plumbing, went to the Davis owner and suggested the windows of the building should be washed because work at these cotton mills usually led to blindness. The Davis family are still very much in charge in the area. He told my aunt, “ If you don’t like the windows or dirt on the windows, go out and find another job.”

I saw the same thing in India with entire families sitting on the ground in dark sheds working on rugs. Most were blind by the age of 23. A pregnant woman in India would go to the field to work, squat and have her baby, wrap the baby in cloth which she had with her, tie the baby on her back and keep on doing her day's work. I saw the cardboard shacks where these people lived. I saw the thatched huts all over Africa where children are raised and where 3,000 die each day of malaria. In the Sudan, and other places, I saw refugee camps where government agencies in this country would not allow hogs or chickens to live.

There is nothing romantic about poverty, Hollywood cannot make it so. The only blessing to my heart in any of these cauldrons of poverty was the attitude of hope and the smiles of appreciation which came from those with the least.

In this time of financial upheaval and adversity never seen before by most Americans, we can remember what Winston Churchill said when England was threatened by Hitler and the Nazi power “if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our country to our duty, and so bear ourselves that if the British empire and commonwealth lasts a thousand years, men will still say ,’this was their finest hour.’”