Did you know there’s a plant called the “Crown of Thorns?” Aside from having beautiful blossoms, it also has sharp, nail-like thorns. Joni explains that this plant reminds her every Easter of the brutality of what Jesus suffered on our behalf. This remembrance leads to praise and thanksgiving to Jesus for all he’s done!
Around this time every year, a certain plant comes alive on my patio.
And it happens right before Easter. Beyond my sliding glass door, I can look out onto the patio and I always see this plant. It’s a plant that comes alive with bright, red blossoms. Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada, and that stunning bush is called a Euphorbia milii, commonly known as the “Crown of Thorns.” And I sure do like to park my wheelchair close to it, ‘cause I always examine its delicate flowers. They’re so thin and fragile and brilliant with red color. But then, I shift my gaze and linger on its huge, thick, nail-like thorns. Tradition says this was the bush from which the Roman soldiers fashioned the thorny crown for Jesus. I don’t know if that’s true, but just gazing at my patio plant, this “Crown of Thorns” is a heartbreaking vivid reminder of the pain and sacrifice our Savior endured on my behalf. But you know what? The suffering that Jesus physically suffered leading up to his death was a mere warm-up to the real dread that he faced.
Today is Good Friday, and so I want you to think with me on what happened as our Savior hung there, impaled on his cross. Hanging there, he began to feel a foreign sensation. Somewhere during those hours that his body was hanging on nails, an unearthly foul odor must have wafted, not around his nose, but in his heart. He felt utterly dirty. Human wickedness began to crawl upon his spotless being – it was sin, the living excrement from our souls. Jesus did not merely bear the sins of the world; 2 Corinthians 5:21 says that he became sin for us. He was made to be sin for us. He was soaked through and through with our sin.
And so, the apple of the Father’s eye turned brown with the rot of our sin. I think about that, I picture that, and my heart just breaks! What a horrid scene. And it’s what I picture when I gaze on that patio plant in my backyard. I look at those delicate red flowers, and then I focus on those spike-like thorns that appear like rusted steel and I imagine the thistle-crown pushed into the brow of Jesus. I let that thought settle deep, forcing my heart to imagine the rage, the wrath of God being poured out like hot oil on the wounded heart of the Son of Man. God the Father watching as his heart’s treasure, the mirror-image of himself, sank drowning into raw, liquid sin. I sit on that image for a while. I don’t move away from it too quickly. I let the weight of it sober me. True, there is no hint of this horror in the potted plant on my patio, but still, it makes me remember. Especially on Good Friday.
I hope you have a reminder of what it cost Jesus to die in your place because today is a day to remember. There aren’t many days in the church calendar when we are called to remember, but Good Friday is one of them. This day is specifically set aside for you to meditate on all that Jesus suffered, all the pain, and the shame, all the curse that characterized his death. There is no room for a casual sentimentality about the cross. It was an instrument of execution. And Jesus, your Savior and mine, endured it all. He became sin for you so that you might have freedom from sin, escape from hell, the power to live abundantly, and a lasting home in heaven.
So join me today on Good Friday. Carve out some quiet time to reflect on the awful weight of what this day means, and breathe a prayer of wonder and thanksgiving to Jesus, which is the best way to prepare your heart, to get it ready to really celebrate on Easter Sunday!
© Joni and Friends