Thorns and Thistles

09-07-2025 | Empowerment | GraceStation Press

Ever been so taken by the beauty of something that you just had to reach out and touch it, only to feel the sting instead? It looks perfect, smooth, inviting... but then you're pricked, caught off guard by the pain. That’s life sometimes, beautiful from afar but laced with hidden thorns.

Still, there's something powerful about it. Because out of life’s thorns and thistles, a rose emerges not shaped in spite of the struggle, but because of it.

In Genesis 3:18, after Adam and Eve disobeyed, it says:

“It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.”

Thorns and thistles; symbols of hardship, frustration, and struggle. But even in that, when we hold on in faith, God forms something rare. A rose. Set apart. Beautiful. Not untouched by pain, but deeply formed by it.

People see you walking in grace, glowing in glory and they admire it. But they don’t always see the fire you walked through. The process. The pressing. The breaking. The refining. Just like gold, there’s pain in being purified. Fire burns. But it also shapes.

Sometimes the thistles are so thick, we can’t even see the budding rose growing around us or within us. We feel buried, lost in it. Yet when we finally emerge, suddenly everyone notices. But you were always there, just hidden in the thorns.

It reminds me of the Holy Spirit. Always present, but often drowned out by life’s noise and chaos. Still, He whispers. At first it's faint, but when we choose to die to self and live for Jesus, His voice grows louder, stronger, clearer.

Out of the thorns and thistles, a rose blooms; graceful, bold, and unapologetically beautiful. Not because it escaped the struggle, but because it was shaped by it.