CORPSE FLOWER!

     ‘Corpse Flower’ by Lornagrl is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0. 

What’s that smell? 

You are one of the 20,000 people lined up outside the Chicago Botanical Garden to see and smell, a blooming Corpse Flower!  It’s a rare event.  Some bloom every seven years.  Others only bloom every few decades.  Not only is this bloom a rare event, but it is also one of the largest flowers on the planet!  It can grow up to 10 to 15 feet tall, with leaves that can be 13 feet wide!  Did you bring your mask?  It smells like rotting flesh.  As you approach the flower, are you asking yourself and God Himself, why in the world He would create such a stinking, HUGH plant?  I would guess that most of the 20,000 people who come to see this amazing flower never, NEVER even give it a thought.

Like every other thing God has created, it does have a powerful (BIG) message for us.  Think about this.  The flower is deceptive.  It smells like rotting flesh and even raises its interior temperature to 98 degrees to fool unsuspecting flesh flies, carrion beetles and other carnivorous (flesh eating) insects.  They think, ‘oh boy’, something to eat.  ‘Wrong!’  There is no food in there.  The plant uses this deception to lure the bugs into the plant to spread its pollen.  Once pollinated, the plant can then grow a cluster of seeds and assure the species will survive. 

Have you ever said, “that stinks’ in reference to some sin committed against a friend?  Maybe someone broke into their house or stole their identity.  AND THAT JUST STINKS!  This phrase is part of our vernacular.  It has its origin in the scripture, ‘For the wages of sin is death’ from Romans 6:23.  Sin produces death.  SIN STINKS!  Yet, like the unsuspecting flesh fly, it draws people in like flies to a corpse flower.  But there is no food in there.  Sin is a deception.  Some actually like the smell of sin.  They are lured in.  But what they find contains no food, no life at all, only death.  Yes, Hebrews 11:25 says that there is ‘pleasure in sin for a season’, but don’t follow the flies.  Sin will only lead to death; death of relationships, death of your freedom (when you are thrown in prison), or even your own death because you choose to follow the flies and ended up in a situation that resulted in your own death.  There are many warning scriptures, like Galatians 6, ‘Do not be deceived:  God cannot be mocked.  A man reaps what he sows.’  Proverbs 1, where King Solomon in all his wisdom warns you to not be enticed by sinful men….’the paths of all who go after ill-gotten gain; it takes away the life of those who get it.’ Or Proverbs 7, where he warns men not to be enticed by an adulterous woman, because, ‘Her house is a highway to the grave, leading down to the chambers of death.’  WOW!  Serious stuff.  Read Romans 1.  Frightening, because it says that if they are deceived by sin and follow the flies, first, God will ‘darken their hearts’ and if they continue to sin, God will ‘give them over in their sinful desires of their hearts’.  This means that they become unable to think of what they are doing as a sin.  Sound familiar?  It is the world we live in……what is evil is good and what is good is evil.  

AND the scriptures warn those who think this way, ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter’.  Isaiah 5:20. (Those who willingly persist in sin consider not the power of God’s anger). Matthew Henry Commentary on the Whole Bible.

Perhaps this message is contained in one of the largest flowers in the world to emphasize the importance of the message!  The message is truly a matter of LIFE AND DEATH!!