I had tried several times, with little success, to propagate some of my favorite roses. Propagating is the process of planting a stem cut from an existing rose bush to obtain a new bush. When the stem is placed in the soil, it will develop new roots to support and sustain itself.  I wasn’t totally unsuccessful, but the few times I tried to replicate a few of my rose bushes, it seemed that the new roots took so long to develop that the stem died before the roots were able to nourish it.

It wasn’t until this year that I learned what I was doing wrong. I wasn’t wounding the stems. I know this may sound counterintuitive, but I discovered that I had to injure the cutting before planting it to get healthy roots. This year, before placing the cuttings in the soil, I scraped away the thorns on the lower half of my cuttings and pealed back small portions of the dark green outer layer exposing the bright white wood underneath. According to the dictionary, this layer known as Cambium is a layer between the xylem and the phloem that gives rise to new cells and is responsible for secondary growth. In laymen’s terms, wounding the stem and exposing the white stuff encourages new growth and enables the cutting to establish roots faster. The roots grow from the wounds.

The spiritually minded man cannot make this discovery without seeing the correlating spiritual metaphor. When God chooses a stem for Himself and cuts it away from its native branch, He is always wise enough to wound it before planting it. He does this not because He is harsh but because He knows that the stem will not survive without roots, and without wounds, the roots will never form.  It is the wounding that we endure that causes our roots to go deep into the soil and establish us in the grace of God. When God wounds, He does it not so that we will die but so that we will survive and thrive. My friend, if you feel God has cut you, remember He did it because He loves you and wants to see you bloom. He wounds the cutting to establish it and establishes it to enable it to achieve prize-winning roses.

In Christ Alone,