What Is Your Thorn?

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
~2 Corintians 12:7b-9a

Thorns…whose life is without them? I titled this post, “What Is Your Thorn?”, but it could just as easily have been titled, “WHO Is Your Thorn?”
Is there just one, two, or many? Is it an ailment/disease, a bad habit, a boss or task at your job, a person, who gets under your skin?

In consideration of thorns, splinters also come to my mind. I can recall running my hand quickly over a railing that seemed to be finished so smoothly-
but then suddenly and unexpectedly, a unseen splinter stabbed deeply into my palm. It was so embedded that neither tweezers or a needle could extract it;
I had no choice but to let my body’s defensive mechanisms push it to the surface. Meantime it ached, specifically worse when I tried to grasp anything firmly;
I had to be very gentle as to how I used my hand as the healing process progressed.
The metaphor God demonstrated is a clear one.
Paul asked the Lord repeatedly to just end his pain-just get it over with-quickly removing whatever-or whoever- it was that troubled him,
but there was a painful lesson, a lesson about longsuffering and the wonders of His Grace that Paul had to be taught.

Perhaps you-and I- are being taught lessons about God’s all-encompassing sufficiency in the midst
of dealing with whatever-or whoever-or both-is/are causing us
that we can’t overcome ourselves.
Rest in His Grace, beloved.
It is more than enough.

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