It's Not Easy

Good Saturday morning! Identifying a plant growing in the garden is not easy, especially when I didn't plant the thing. In the case of carrots, beets, and the few others I planted and marked with stakes or hills, I can reasonably expect that the row of plants that look alike are probably what I planted. In the case of plants that came up on their own after surviving the spading and tilling, my efforts to pull and hoe, and my general inexperience with gardens, I pretty much classify them as weeds. Then, one of the small bushy plants sprouts a bumper crop of little berries. Good to eat, make jelly, or deadly toxin? Do I have a plant soon to be known as the Colorado Two-Step Berry, or do I need to start buying some jelly jars? It's not easy to know this morning.

Watching a few YouTube videos on toxic plants can really make a person give up wandering the woods, or at least any thoughts of touching or eating anything while there. Perhaps expecting it to come up as one of the toxic plants is the wrong direction to start my search. The owners of the garden prior to my arrival probably were not space aliens or vampires or some other species that can ingest berries dangerous to humans, so I may want to look at edible plant images or videos first. One thing that I won't do is pop a few in my mouth just to give 'em a try. It's funny, but when it comes to sin, much like our most ancient ancestors, we tend to ingest it right away.

Put up a sign with a skull and crossbones symbol, words of warning, and a picture of a prostrate fellow with X's for eyes in front of a tree with fruit, and some nut would still want to taste the fruit. God said that a fruit tree was off limits to Adam and Eve, but they still ate it with just a little tempting from the serpent. It's not easy to avoid disobeying God, and we are probably no better than anyone in the Old Testament. Are we worse than they were? Probably not that either, but it seems that ever since God started turning out humans, we've been a bit stupid when it comes to reaching for the fruit called sin. The Devil may help by lowering the branch, but we seem ready to reach for it any time.

Hang your head in shame, human, and welcome to the world in need of saving grace. Yup, that's us. Without the grace of Jesus, we would just keep reaching for those deadly fruits. In fact, even under the loving arms of grace we have a tendency to reach back for a bit more of that forbidden stuff. One day though, we will enjoy the purity of heart that a good cleansing by our Lord produces in the redeemed from the Earth. Once again we will eat from the Tree of Life. The narrow road to that point is not easy, but faith in Christ will get us there.

Have a fun Saturday,
Bucky