Pastor Eric Schroeder
Text: 2 Corinthians 12:7-10
Watch Service Video
This past week, my older daughter and I noticed that the wild blackberries were ripening. So, we grabbed a couple of plastic containers from the parsonage and worked our way around the church parking lot looking for as many ripe berries as we could reach. By the time we were finished, we ended up with just about a pint of berries, but since I happened to be wearing shorts at the time, if you had looked at me from the knees down, you might have guessed that I had been in a fight with a cat . . . because as we all ought to know by now, blackberry bushes have thorns—lots of thorns. And I can’t say that I was thankful at the time. Today, we have the opportunity to consider thorns from a biblical perspective. Not just words on a page, though; it’s a very personal perspective, as St. Paul opens up to the Corinthians, and to us, about something difficult that he was going through in his life. Let’s read the opening verse again: To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. On the one hand, we might wish that we had more information here. What exactly is Paul talking about when he refers to the “thorn in his flesh?” Some Bible commentators take what we know about Paul’s life and try to speculate as to what it might be: for instance, we know Paul faced physical beatings, even stonings from those who opposed him; maybe his thorn was an injury that didn’t heal right or left him with chronic pain. We know that there was a time when Paul became very ill on his travels; maybe he had some lingering effects of malaria or some other disease. We know Paul wrote with a larger font than usual; maybe he had poor eyesight. We know that Paul on occasion let Barnabas or Silas (his traveling companions) do a lot of the talking; maybe Paul had a stutter or some other speech impediment. In the end, we can’t say for sure.
Keep Reading >>