Thorn in the side

 It should be clear that a thorn in the side is aggravating. Most of us don't come into contact with thorns that often - this time of year it might be a thistle in some undergrowth, or when you're trying to pick a raspberry, that kind of thing, but most of the time, you're not going to be running into thorns all that often.

Most of that is because for a lot of us, we're not in thorn places all that often. Thorns are for the plant to protect itself against animals that might try to it, or from you for trying to stamp on it, pull it, or get it out of the way somehow. For a lot of human history, you would be navigating through the world through things like old goat tracks, fields, forests, that kind of thing, and not through roads cleared of any kind of natural hazards. In the time of Paul, people would have been moving around on Roman roads, which were a big deal for this reason - cleared of obstacles, cleared of hazards, level and easy to walk on, that kind of thing. Most other routes would have been in varying degrees of overgrowth, tough to make it through easily or cleanly. And if you're navigating these routes, you're going to end up with thorns, thistles and burrs that will poke, impinge on and irritate you. 

Now, if you have a splinter (or sliver) stuck in your skin, how do you get it out? Likely you would sterilize a needle, or get out some tweezers, and pluck that back out again. Do you legitimately think that in the time of Paul, people had access to the tweezers and such that we have now? Not likely. More likely than not, you would end up with a thorn stuck in your flesh, and no real way to pull it out. 

A thorn in your flesh, a pebble in your shoe, it's uncomfortable and unpleasant. Every step is uncomfy, and you really want to stop and remove it. Pebble in shoe, easy; thorn in flesh, harder. The thorn in your flesh digs in, and reminds you with every movement that something is jabbed into you. And this what Paul wants to propose to you as an image of what he has to deal with. He has to deal with weakness in his flesh. What is that weakness? Paul isn't real clear, and it doesn't matter. It's not important what his weakness is, it's important to know that he has a weakness. And his weakness keeps him humble.

Even though he has had surpassing visions, has been able to see Christ, and has had doctrine and grace be communicated to him, even with all that, Paul needs to remain humble. As do we all. One of the problems with what happens now is that things are, for a lot of people, too good. People have money and time, hot and cold running water, access to all the world's information in a second, information beaming into their brains constantly, that kind of thing. And as such, to quote Network - "all necessities provided. All anxieties tranquilized." We have the luxury now of being concerned about missing TV shows, not about surviving until we turn 15. And so when people are asked about their faith in the living God, and their thoughts about the life to come, they are naturally not too concerned about it, and in fact they believe that God owes them an explanation for why things are the way they are. After all, they're the main character. Even God himself should answer to them.

But you're neither Peter nor Andrew, James nor John. You're not Paul, and you're not Barnabas. You're you. And you, like the rest of us, do need to be kept humble. Paul understood his humility as being important, even crucial. A thing that he had to have to stop him from falling out of his need for the love of God. It's easy to think that you're everything, to lose all conception of anything beyond yourself, and to think that you are the measure of everything. So in his wisdom, God occasionally sends to us all a thorn in the flesh. What is it? It could be anything for you, but a reminder, certainly, of your frailty, something to keep you humble, and to remind you of your desperate need for the Lord Jesus, who is there to redeem the frailty of his fallen creation.