Nice...At First

The cheery yellow flowers brought sudden disappointment to my day.  The flowers looked great, but they signaled a menacing invasion.

Puncturevine weed.

The name tells the story.  This weed rapidly sprawls across the ground.  Its yellow blooms give way to spiky seed clusters that are painfully sharp.  The spikes on the seeds can easily puncture bike tires.  The plants are inconspicuous at first: by the time you see them, they’ve usually sent many seeds hitch-hiking down the road as they stuck to passing tires.

I quit grieving my discovery and got to work.  After delicately uprooting the plants I found, I searched for the seeds that had already been released to the ground.  Picking up the obviously visible seeds with bare hands usually results in some acupuncture treatments to the fingertips.  And often the best way to find the hidden seeds is by feeling along the ground…

The cheery yellow puncturevine flowers look inviting and innocent, but they grow into something ugly and painful that spreads out of control.  Likewise, many things in life look good at first, but result in pain and loss, and cause a lot of painful work to anyone who tries to improve the situation.

The Bible doesn’t tell us to judge anything by its flowers.  It says “you shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16-20).

So don’t be hasty to follow all the pretty flowers in life.  Carefully consider what the end result will be.

The quote above from the book of Matthew refers specifically to religious teachers.  Every religion comes in a flowery package.  Ignore the flowers.  Look for the religion that genuinely produces the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22,23).

We’ve all sown bad seeds in our lives – seeds that produce wicked thorns.  There’s still hope.  Our Saviour endured a crown of thorns because He loves us too much to let the thorns of sin overspread and ruin our lives.  If you let Him, He will patiently work to remove the thorns of sin from your life.

Removing puncturevine weeds seems like an endless battle.  Wherever a plant grows to maturity, it leaves seeds that will grow up in the coming years.  Diligent work must be done for years to remove most puncturevine problems.

Removing the thorns from our lives makes removing puncturevine look easy.  Don’t give up.  Keep asking God to work in your life, and keep sowing the good seeds of Bible truth in your life.  God’s promise is “He Who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).