What Poinsettias Can Teach Us

I love poinsettias but I always seem to kill them. I don't mean to kill them. I don't want to kill them, but nonetheless, I end up killing them. I vaguely recall my Mom putting them in a closet for periods of time as they need darkness to keep the red leaves, or something like that. I am not sure. I think she killed them too, to tell the truth. It is a family curse.

However, I was listening to a radio gardening show one day and found out that poinsettias are finicky. It is not my fault that I killed them. Most people kill them. That's why poinsettias do such a booming business each year. No one ever has her poinsettia last all the way from one Christmas to the next.

This is so like the Bible book of Judges. The story of both the judges and kings of Israel is depressingly the same as the story of my poinsettias. In the history of Israel during the time of Judges, there is a constant cycle of blessing, disobedience, punishment, repentence, blessing, disobedience...etc etc etc.
Similarly, each year, I get the lovely poinsettia, then I don't care for it properly, it dies, I am terribly sorry, get a new poinsettia, neglect it, it dies.....etc etc etc.

The lesson is clear. Somehow, someone has to break the cycle. In the case of human kind, the cycle of sin was broken by Jesus. He knew we would never escape the perpetual slide into sin. The hope and promise of Christmas is that we could be reborn into new life, through faith in Jesus' paying the penalty of our sin once and for all. Christmas is about His birth, but the real gift of Jesus comes with His death and resurrection. I didn't really understand that until I became a Christian.

Anyway, back to the poinsettias. I wised up this year. I got very realistic silk poinsettias. I put them in a gold basket that looks like a sleigh and arranged them artfully. They look real. In fact, they look better than real. My real poinsettias never looked that good. The silk ones will be eternally beautiful. They are an entirely new creation! Why did I wait so long?

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For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:14, 15, 17-21 NIV)



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