Luke 6:44

A Bramble Bush

A bramble bush. Luke 6:44.

I wonder how many of you have been brambling, or are going to bramble, this autumn? If you haven't brambled, you have missed a great deal of fun. Only you must be properly prepared for your expedition; otherwise the fun may end in tragedy. The best way to get ready is to put on your very oldest clothes and your very shabbiest boots; for brambles have a nasty way of fastening themselves to garments and scratching ugly marks on shoe-leather. When you are properly rigged out, you set off with a tin pail or a basket. You spend a glorious afternoon hunting and scrambling; and you come back at night tired but triumphant, with purple lips and fingers, and with a quantity of splendid fresh air in your lungs.

Now there are one or two things you may have noticed while you were a-brambling.

The first is that if you want to be successful you must be prepared to take some trouble and to bear a few scratches. For brambles aren't so easily picked as strawberries. Some of them may be within our reach,

but a great many more will be just beyond us, so that we have to push into the bushes, and stand on our tip-toes,

and get our legs pricked and our hands torn. But we don't mind, do we? Not a bit! It's all in the day's fun, and the brambles are worth it even though we do have to get thorns extracted with horrid sharp needles when we go home.

And do you know, boys and girls, that you will find more and more as you grow up that the things that are most worth doing and having are the things that we have to take trouble about? It doesn't matter whether it is a game, or a lesson, or a bit of work: it is the things that we have to make an effort to accomplish that are most worth while in the end, provided of course we are striving after really good things.

Did you ever hear the fable about the Swiss clock.that wanted to get rid of its weights? It had ticked away quite cheerfully on the wall, year in, year out, marking the time and striking the hours. But one day it woke with a headache and it began to feel sorry for itself. It complained of the two dreadful weights it had to carry, and it said that it was quite sure it could work much better if these were taken away. Well, the owner of the clock removed the weights, and what do you suppose happened? Why, the clock immediately stopped dead! It could neither mark the time, nor strike the hours, nor tick a single tick without the weights that it fancied were hampering it.

Now sometimes when we have a stiff lesson to prepare, or a difficult bit of work to do, or when we have to practice hard at a game and don't seem to make much progress, we are tempted to think, What is the good of it all? But it is just these weights that are helping us to get on. By accepting and making use of them we are gaining knowledge, and we are gaining something much more valuable than knowledge. Some people call it character and others call it “grit.”

Why, the bramble itself can teach us a lesson in this way, for it “ sticks in ” in order to climb. If it were not for those very prickles that annoy us the bramble would be condemned to sprawl about on the ground. But by the help of its thorns it seizes hold of the branches of sturdier bushes and so lifts itself up into the air and the sunlight which help its growth.

But there is another thing that you may have noticed about the bramble. If you want to find the biggest and juiciest berries you must sometimes stoop. Very often the best are to be found underneath branches quite close to the ground. It may be because the moisture helps the fruit to swell or just that other people have forgotten to look there.

And isn't it just like that in life, boys and girls? Sometimes we find the best people in the lowliest places; often the most beautiful virtues grow in the most lowly soil.

When Ian Maclaren, a great Scottish writer and preacher, was a small boy he went to stay with his uncle in the country. When Sunday came he went to church, and as it was Communion Sunday he sat in the gallery and watched the elders reverently carry round the bread and wine. He was greatly impressed with one old white-haired man who was dressed all in black and who had a beautiful benevolent face. When he was playing on the road on Monday morning he was surprised to see the same old man, wearing shabby, patched clothes, and breaking stones by the roadside. He ran to ask his uncle about it, and the uncle replied, “Yes, that is old John. He is only a poor old stone breaker, but he is the most Christ-like man in the congregation.”

And, boys and girls, by looking for beauty and goodness in unexpected places we are following in the steps of Jesus, who saw good and beauty in the things and the people that others despised.

There is a beautiful old legend which tells how one evening Jesus came to a town where a crowd had gathered round the body of a dead dog. The dog was covered with wounds and besmirched with dirt, for it had been dragged through the streets of the town. The crowd looked upon it with disgust. One remarked upon its torn skin, another drew attention to its bloodstained limbs, and a third pointed to the mud which covered it. Then a stranger said, “Look at his teeth! Are they not whiter than pearls?” And the crowd drew back amazed. Then one among them spoke: “This must be Jesus of Nazareth, for He alone could have seen beauty in a dead dog.”