Roses Have Thorns

I was just now indulging in one of my favorite pastimes of watching Psych2Go videos.

Psych2Go is a group of American educational YouTubers who make videos “covering topics related to psychology, including facts about mental health disorders, relationships and personality traits. Their videos are usually animated, and feature a white humanoid character carrying out actions they are describing along with annotations.”

The advice they sometimes offer their viewers, while it may be sound from the perspective of behavioral and humanistic psychology simply is not workable for a Christian who takes seriously Jesus’ teaching and life and tries to emulate them.

For example, if someone takes a dislike to us and shows no signs of changing their mind, Psych2Go’s advice is— “Life is short. Cherish the moments with people who love you and leave the rest behind.”

Jesus, on the other hand, tells us to love our neighbors, love those who dislike us, and love each other. Jesus also tells us that if something comes between us and someone else, we are to do all we can to make things right between them and us.

Dumping someone who does not like us to hang out with those who accept us is not an option for us. If we are going to follow Jesus, we can’t turn our backs on someone because they have chosen not to like us.

One of the things that I did learn from the videos I watched this evening is that in thrashing around, trying to do what is the best thing to do, I may be giving expression to anger with which I may not be in touch. We are not always aware of our anger but the person with whom we are angry picks up our anger at them from what we may say and do.

It may not be our intention to express anger at them, but nonetheless we are signaling that we are hurting from their rejection of us and are angry with them. We have not quite forgiven them. We keep pick off the scab on the wound and not letting it heal.

I have been using a lot of pictures of red roses in my Facebook posts. Red roses symbolize true love, the love that we have for someone whom we genuinely love.

Roses, whatever the color they may be, do have thorns. Sometimes our love for someone can have thorns even if we do not mean it to have them. Rose thorns, I know from experience, can hurt. So can the thorns in our love too.

True love is not a spur of the moment thing that may evaporate over time. It is something to which we set our hearts, and which grows gradually. It does not fade away.

Yes, it does have thorns, thorns for us and thorns for those whom we love.

Jesus suffered the pain and agony those thorns can cause. He wore a crown of thorns for our sake, was flogged with whip of knotted cords with thorns and other sharp objects intertwined in them and had iron spikes driven through his hands and feet. He suffered that pain and agony that we might know true love, the love of which our love is a pale reflection.

Those who dislike us may not want to hear that we love them, May be our love is like the thorns of the stem of a rose. When we snag ourselves on them, they dig deep into our flesh and hurt us.

I don’t know. I am not able to put myself in their shoes because they have not trusted me enough to open their lives to me.

I can only do what Jesus did. He kept on loving even when loving hurt. He keeps on loving us still.