The Blessing of a Thorn
Joy with lifted veil Shows a face as pale As the fair changing moon so fair and frail.
Pain is but pleasure
If we know
It heaps up treasure;
Even so!
. Turn, transfigured Pain;
Sweetheart, turn again.
For fair art thou as moonrise after rain.
Christina G. Rossetti.
It is an old story, but it is worth retelling many times for its rich lessons. St. Paul had some serious malady which caused him a great deal of suffering, and seemed to unfit him for duty. We need not trouble ourselves to guess what it was. He calls it a “thorn in the flesh,” He asked the Lord to remove it, but the request was not granted.
We might stop just here, and call it an unanswered prayer. But there is something else in the story which we must not overlook. It really was not an unanswered prayer. We learn that this thorn had a mission. It seems that originally it was a messenger of Satan. Just what Satan’s connection with it was we are not told. Satan’s intention was to buffet Christ’s servant, to annoy him, to give him pain, to lessen his influence and usefulness. But this messenger of Satan is seized by Christ, and transformed into a minister of good and blessing.
That is what Christ would do with all the evils that come into our lives. He would not only prevent them from working harm to us, but he would compel them to do us good. Temptation comes to us as a messenger of Satan to entice us to sin. If we yield to it, it leaves us broken and defeated, lying in the dust of shame, our soul hurt. But if we resist it and overcome it, not only can no harm come to US, but we have snatched a blessing from the hand of our foe. The victorious encounter has made us stronger, and the experience of temptation has enriched our life.
Sorrow also is evil in itself. Left to work out its natural effects in a life, it would dim the soul’s lustre, and quench its joy. But Christ takes sorrow, and transforms it into a messenger of grace. When we get home, we shall see that we owe many of the best things in our life to the ministry of suffering.
There is not a hardness of any kind that comes into our life that may not be thus transformed into good. Difficulties are laid in our path, not for stumbling-stones, but for stepping-stones. Thwartings and hindrances are not intended to check our progress, but to put more strength into our life. Botanists tell us that the fruits on a tree are arrested growths. They would naturally develop into new twigs and branches, but the progress is checked in some way, and the growths are stunted. Yet the tree does not allow them to be failures; it turns its thwarted developments into something even better than its first hopes. So it may be with thwarted hopes and plans in human life; they may become rich fruits in the character. That is what the grace of God is ready to make of them. There is no messenger of Satan that may not be transformed into a minister of blessing.
The reason St. Paul’s prayer was not directly answered and his thorn removed, was because he needed the thorn. He could not have spared it without sore loss. He would have grown proud if the torturing trouble had been taken away. No doubt there is in this fragment of spiritual biography a suggestion of the reason of many unanswered prayers. The things we beseech God to give us, and which we think would add so much to our comfort and good, would not be blessings. The thing we ask God to take away, which we think hinders us so much in our usefulness, really is something that we need. Paul had not thought of his thorn as a blessing, nor had it ever occurred to him that he could not spare it. He had thought of it only as a weighty encumbrance, which it were well for him to get rid of as speedily as possible.
We are not accustomed either to think of our thorn as something we could not part with without loss or peril. We are not accustomed to thank God for the burdening, torturing trouble which causes so much pain. We do not dream that in any sense it is a good for which we ought to be grateful. Yet if we could see into our own inner life, no doubt we should find that it is one of our best blessings. There is a marginal Bible reading that tells us that our burden is a gift of God to us. This is very interesting. It is a new and most inspiring revelation to the Christian, when he learns for the first time that the load under which he is bowing is his Father’s gift. When we remember who God is, how gracious and kind he is always, we cannot doubt that his gift must be good, whatever it is. It may be suffering, it may be a heavy cross of care, it may be a bodily defect or infirmity. It may be a burden that we are carrying from love, the burden of some other one’s broken life. It may be a burden of sickness, of pain, of loss, of sorrow. Whatever it is, our burden is God’s gift.
When we think of it in this way, how the heaviest burden is changed before us! That which an hour ago seemed so oppressive in its weight, so unlovely in its form and features, is hallowed and transformed. We had thought it an evil; but now it appears as another of God*s blessings, its mission being to advance our good. Far more than most of us are aware are we indebted to our burden, our thorn, for many of the best things in our life. It is that by which we have grown into our greatest measures of strength.
No wonder, then, that, when we cry to God for the taking away of what seem to us hindrances, but really are helps, he does not heed our requests. He is better to us than our own desires. To answer as we wish would be to rob us of blessings we could not afford to lose.
But there is more of the lesson. While God did not grant St. PauFs prayer for the removal of his thorn, he gave him a better answer than he sought. It is no part of God’s plan for us to make our life easy. That is what human love usually seeks to do. We think we must save our friends from every hardship, if it is possible for us to do so. If they are in trouble or distress, we would instantly deliver them if we could. Our kindness directs its efforts toward the amelioration of all suffering. We hasten to take away the burden that presses on our friend. We think love requires this.
But that is not God’s way. To his loving thought there is something better than delivering us from pain; the peaceable fruits of sanctified pain are better. There is something that he desires for us more than the easing of our life by the lifting away of our burden; it is that we should grow strong under our burden, grow strong through bearing it. Hence the promise is not that God will lift off the burden that we cast upon him, but that he will sustain us in carrying it.
That is precisely what the Lord did in the case of St. Paul. The burden was not taken away, — it was not best that it should be; that was not the truest way to give help. St. Paul needed the thorn to save him from being exalted overmuch, to keep him conscious of his earthliness. Yet the prayer did not go unanswered. Instead of the removal of the trouble came the promise,” My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.’*
Few things are more discouraging than weakness. It is humiliating, disheartening. It stands in the way of our doing what we are eager to do. It hampers us in our running the race of life, compelling us to fall behind our competitors. It prevents us doing the things we want to do. It seems to paralyze us when we think of carrying it about with us day after day, year after year. We think of weakness as an unrelieved misfortune. But here is a wonderful secret; weakness, if given to Christ, is filled by him with his own strength, and thus becomes mighty, invincible.
The blessing of a thorn is the blessing of weakness. We have more of Christ because of our infirmity. Weakness is dear and endearing to the heart of Christ, and thus draws to itself more of his help than strength does. Weakness without Christ is pitiable indeed; but weakness with Christ is unconquerable, for it receives for itself the divine strength.
These are hints of the blessing that may be in a thorn. It may become a blossoming tree, bearing fruit for our hunger and the world’s, instead of a sharp thorn, piercing our flesh, and wounding and hurting us. Jesus himself wore a crown of thorns, and since then his grace can change human pain into blessing.
To get the blessing from our thorn we need only to be in Christ, dwelling close to him, intrusting all our life to him. We cannot ourselves extract good from evil, or compel our troubles to yield benedictions, or change sharp thorns into beauteous roses. No hand but Christ’s can work these marvellous transformations for us. But if, with simple faith and unquestioning confidence, we lay all the hard things into the hands that bear the print of the nails, we shall be comforted, and shall get good out of all that seems evil. One writes: —
If I might kneel
Where Jesus’ smile could courage give;
If I sometimes might feel
His hand in comfort on my head,
And hear him say: **My little child,
I know it all; I still will heal
Each wound; be of good cheer.”
If I close to his side might stand,
And kiss the bruised feet,
And know he knew it first, and loves me still, —
Perhaps, then in Gethsemane,
I might make song above my prayer.
And feel his face bending to see
My need, and clasp my faltering hand.
And guide to the white gate, and say, perhaps:
**Well done! This is thy Father’s house,
Where many mansions be.”
Perhaps, all spent with carrying weight
In life’s sojourn,
Give humble faith unto his will,
And say, in prayer: **Thou knowest best.
Thy will be done.
So I thy presence earn.”