Micah 7

Micah 7:4

Grow Your Thorns In A Hedge A thorn hedge.—Micah 7:4.A thorn hedge! That is something we all know. They are as common as blackberries in England, and though the fields and roads in Scotland are bounded mostly by stone walls or “dykes,” still there are not a few hedges to be seen as well. Some of us think a thorn hedge would be improved if it had no thorns. At least, if it were thornless we’d have fewer tears in our clothes and fewer scratches on our hands. What would you think if you lived in Palestine where the plants which bear thorns can grow them one and a half inches long?

These are thorns you could call thorns.Yes, and besides growing long thorns Palestine grows many thorns, so many for its size that it has been styled “the land of thorns.” If I should try to describe to you all its different kinds of thorn bushes it would take me the whole forenoon, for it has about two hundred varieties. Some of them are climbers— rather like the blackberry or bramble, but their fruit is red and bitter.

They grow in the salt marshes, and the Arabs call them “wolf’s grapes.” Some are prickly burrs which get into the shoe or between the bare foot and the sandal. They have a Latin name which means “tribulation,” and it suits them. Others are like gigantic thistles ten to fifteen feet tall. Others still have long, stiff spines that tear a gaping wound. Some are a kind of prickly pear. Others, again, have gummy leaves, and stems and branches of these last are used by the natives to sweep the floors of their houses. They are as good as a mop, for insects and particles of dust stick to the gum.The thorns flourish on every hillside and on every waste piece of ground. There are whole thickets of them as well as scattered bushes.

They are as plentiful as heather on a heather moor—and you know how plentiful that is.Now, you would never choose thorns as a meal, but the amazing thing is that the goats and camels of the Holy Land consider them delicacies. They make straight for the very spikiest of them, and chump them up with great gusto. The mouths of these creatures are lined with particularly tough skin, and that is how they manage it.The thorns are useful to man too. They are cut with a reaping-hook and taken to the lime-kiln to help to burn lime. But perhaps the best use to which they are put is to make a hedge. Thorn hedges are of two kinds—growing and dead.

The live thorn hedge is made by planting in a furrow slips of thorn bushes. These slips spring up into thriving plants, and in less than no time they form a splendid thick hedge.

The other kind of hedge is formed of cut branches of thorns. They are laid round a patch of land to a height of several feet, and a thickness of two to three feet. Thorn hedges are usually set round vineyards and sheepfolds to keep out robbers and beasts of prey, who might steal the grapes or kill the sheep. Against such there is no better protection.Boys and girls, I want you to turn all your thorns into hedges. I want you to put your thorns to the best use. What do I mean by your thorns? Well, there are several things I might call your thorns, but what I am specially thinking of is your little hot tempers. You know we all have tempers.

Some of us have bigger tempers than others, just as some bushes have crueler, sharper spines.Now, thorns are one of two things: they are either a hindrance or a protection. They either catch your clothes and scratch your face and hurt you horribly, or they act as protectors to keep off harm from what they are set to guard. What are you going to do with that thorny temper of yours? Are you going to let it hurt everyone that comes in contact with it? Or are you going to plant it in a hedge, trim it neatly, and use its thorns only for defense? Are you going to make it a protector of the weak?

Are you going to use it only when a boy smaller than yourself is being ill-treated, or when some poor dumb animal is being tormented, or when some nasty story is being told, or when some dishonorable deed is being proposed? Then is the time to use your thorny temper.

Let it prick hard then. Temper is splendid when you use it only on occasions such as these. It is no longer temper. It is what is called “righteous anger.” Christ Himself — the gentle Christ — knew such anger. He spoke to the mean people and the cruel people and the false people words that wounded like thorns and stung like whips.So grow your thorns in a hedge. Use your tempers only when you feel that God Himself would be angry. God gave us our tempers, but He meant us to use them wisely. When we make them protectors we are putting them to their noblest use.

Micah 7:17

Even A Worm Will Turn Worms of the earth.—Micah 7:17 (AV). What is your opinion about worms? Do you exclaim, “Ugh! Horrible creature!” when you meet one crawling over the garden path? Or are you like Charles Kingsley’s little daughter who surprised and rather shocked a guest of her father’s by crying out, “Oh, Daddy, look at this delightful worm!”Now, of course, an earthworm may not be very lovely to look upon, but there’s a very great deal to be said in its favor. To be quite honest, I doubt if the earth could get on at all if its worms came to a sudden end. They do such a useful and important work—these insignificant creatures—that they can’t be done without.

Suppose we take a good look at them and their work this morning.I expect most of you have noticed that an earthworm’s body is made of a great many rings—as a matter of fact, there are usually over a hundred of these. The head end is slightly pointed, and it has a cover or hood which projects over the worm’s mouth.

This hood is very sensitive, and with it the worm seizes leaves or other objects. The worm has neither eyes nor ears, yet it can distinguish between light and darkness, and can hear a sound as slight as the tap of a bird’s foot. A worm has no feet, but each ring of its body has four tiny bristles. These the creature can fix into the side of its burrow, and they help it to get along. As you know, it does its crawling by alternately elongating and contracting its body.So much for its person! Now for its work! You may barely believe it, but the earthworm is the world’s busiest and most hard-working ploughman. It turns over the soil more wonderfully than any plough, and it renews it and lets the air into it as well.

It does this in three ways.1. If the earth is soft it simply bores its way down, head first, and as it bores it produces from its body a sort of slime with which it coats the tunnel it is making. This slime hardens and keeps the earth together so that the tunnel does not fall in.They say it was from watching and copying the methods of a worm that the man who built the famous Thames tunnel succeeded in preventing the tunnel from collapsing. Brunel—for that was his name—made a tube of steel which was driven into the earth and so kept it from falling down. Then between the tube and the earth he forced cement, which set and hardened as firm as a rock.But to return to our worm! At the end of its tunnel it makes a sort of enlarged chamber or burrow, its home, to which it returns when in danger from above.

It plugs the surface opening of this tunnel with leaves, because, though worms like moisture, they don’t like too much rain. It is apt to fill their burrow and drown them out.These tunnels allow air to get into the soil.

They make a road for the raindrops to reach the roots of plants, and they give the delicate roots themselves a ready-made path.2. When the soil is hard, or when it is much matted—as with roots of grass—the worm sets to work in another way. It eats its way through the soil. Then it comes to the surface and ejects the soil in the form of worm-castings—these funny worm shaped little coils of earth that we have all seen on a garden lawn. In passing the earth through its body the worm does two things—it extracts the vegetable and other nourishment it wants out of it, and it grinds it to powder. In this way the worm actually renews the surface of the earth, and the castings which it brings to the top make excellent growing soil for plants.Charles Darwin, the famous scientist, was so interested in worms that he studied them for forty years and then wrote a book about them.

He tells us that he collected and weighed the quantity of earth brought up to the square yard of soil in a year, and he found that it amounted to three and a half pounds. Those of you who are good at math can work out a sum and see how many tons that means to the acre.3.

The third way in which the worm works is just as marvelous. It comes to the surface in the evening (it dislikes light), it keeps the end of its body in the ground and it sweeps the rest of it round in a circle gathering all it can seize. It selects the leaves it wants and carries them down to its underground burrow. There it tears them to shreds, and covers them with a fluid that makes them easily digested. Then it nibbles them at its leisure. These buried leaves form a rich vegetable mold which is a splendid plant food.When you hear all these tales about the worm’s usefulness do you wonder that it is considered a valuable creature?

They say that in the Yoruba country in Africa, the natives think so much of the earthworm that when they decide to break up new soil for a farm the first thing they do is to look for its traces. If there are none the natives try another locality.

They know it is no use attempting to farm where there are no worms.I have kept what I think the most extraordinary fact about a worm to the last. It is this. If, by accident, a worm be cut in two, each half turns into a whole worm, the head part grows a tail, and the tail part grows a head.Now I don’t want all the small boys present to go home and immediately start hunting worms that they may sever them in two. That would be no sport; it would be merely cruel and mean. But I do want them, and the girls too, to think about the fact, for it seems to me that the pluck of the worm which doesn’t lose heart even when it has lost half of its being is worth imitating. It preaches a whole sermon to us, and its text is, “Never lose heart.”If your plans are spoiled, and your hopes wrecked, and you feel for the moment as if everything were going wrong, cheer up! Out of that one sad failure you may, like the worm, with God’s help, make two grand successes.