Have you ever seen a beautiful tree blossoming and all of a sudden dying? In my garden just closer to my mother’s window there was a read flower tree. The flower is named Asoka. It bloomed for years, so beautiful and my mother loved to watch this tree early morning, and admire the beauty of this lovely tree and even talk to the tree. As everyone in my home entered my mother’s room they would see this beautiful tree. As time went by we noticed the leaves of the tree were getting yellow, then branches started to go dry and at the end the tree died. My mother was so sad about it and said “how did my tree die?” Every day that was her question, and she told my brother to find out what had happened to her tree. What he found was a huge worm that had been eating the roots, and that had caused the death of the tree.
Why did I share this story? It is because we to blossom and die without our Knowledge. Song of Solomon 2:15 says “Catch us the little foxes. The little foxes that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes”. We know foxes are cunning animals, and they come to the vines in battalions and they come in the dead dark of the night. They are not easy to catch and they play around the bushes and eat the roots of the vine or any other tree or creeper. This goes unnoticed to the farmer, normally other animals destroy the crops and it is visible, but the foxes damage is not visible, and goes unnoticed, till the crops die.
Sometime the attitudes of our hearts are not known to others, and goes unnoticed even to us. These little foxes enter our lives and kill us spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and maybe also physically. Let us see some of the attitudes or emotions that take control of us.
Bitterness: This is a very strong attitude everyone of us has, in Hebrews 12:15 we read “looking diligently lest anyone should fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up should cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.
I believe when the lively roots of love, joy, peace, are in our hearts and minds they keep the roots of bitterness from growing. If the opposite is true then it causes us sicknesses like cancer, rheumatic arthritis. This can cause much pain and if not treated at the right time they decay day by day and eventually will die.
Anger: this is also very common within the Christian circles, the Apostle Paul says to the believers of Ephesus “ Be angry and sin not” . Anger is an emotion, what do we do when we get angry is the most important question, even if the fox of anger enters our lives to eat our peace we should not sin through that anger. Anger brings sicknesses like pressure, asthma, and bile. These are long time sicknesses.
Lies: another common sin within the church. The bible clearly tells us “Therefore, putting away lying, each one speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one body”. But we have coloured lies for our benefit and say “black lies” “white lies” and justify them. When we lie we bring condemnation on ourselves, we lose our integrity, and tarnish our self image for a life time. This causes many mental illnesses like depression, migraine.
There are many more little foxes like cheating, backbiting, manipulating, and the list can go on and on. However let us check our hearts and see if there are little foxes that have crept in to cause damage to the vine of our lives, if so chase them in the name of Jesus, and protect our vineyards.
These emotions are quick but the consequences of using them are very long. If we are not careful to guard our hearts, just like the little foxes who come for a very short period of time damaging crops, so will our little emotions that comes into our lives in a very short moment cause a life time of damage.
