Life is a sugarcane Plant

1 Thessalonians 5:18

We all wish to live and enjoy the ideal life- one that is full of promise and pleasant expectations all the time. We often enjoy better things in life- better times and moments with our loved ones. Days which we wish would go on endlessly, rolling over and over. Moments like that we feel motivated to say thank you to God easily. And why not, because everything is moving on well for you, in which case the ideal has become the norm. But life is like many things. My mom used to tell me as a boy, that life as we know it, is like a metaphorical sugarcane. For those that are familiar with sugarcane plant, it is a strange plant, which to my mind doesn’t qualify for neither fruit nor vegetable. It is a plant, almost like bamboo, grown for its sucrose content and mostly consumed as refined sugar or processed. Almost like bamboo, except that bamboo is hollow in the inside whereas sugarcane is heavily fibrous inside where the sugar producing liquid is. This grass has a strong stem, which has several divisions in it called growth ring. The growth rings are the barriers within the stem and are often where the sugar nectar ends. The growth rings can ensure that one part of the same sugarcane will be sweet whilst other half another half not so sweet. Without going too much into the product’s scientific facts, suffice it to say that this strange plant gave the world sugar. It took me a while to understand what my mom really meant, but as I grew up, I came to the full understanding that life is indeed not always sweet from morning to the night. Like sugarcane, parts of the days or weeks or months of the year can be sweet, but often there are bounded by growth rings which stops the sweetness in its tracks. These rings not only prevent the production of sugar, sometimes it produces bitterness. You are familiar with the kind of bitterness, disappointments, betrayals you go through. Those are the moments which we find very difficult to possibly understand why a loving God will allow all that challenges to come our ways.

In 1 Thess 5: 18, we are admonished that in all things we should give thanks to God. All things- good and bad; happiness and sadness; in life and death; in want and in plenty- all things. There comes the challenge. How can we give thanks to God for bad things that come our way? Easier said than done, isn’t it? Of course. It is easier said than done. However, if we remember who we are, who made us, the reason why he made us in His own image and in accordance with his own time- then we shall understand that he knows what you are going through at any point in time.

God deliberately made life as a sugarcane so that each time we come to each growth ring, we shall stop and think about Him as we depend on him and also think about others before we go to the next stage one. I have learned that it is good to give thanks to God in all things than to curse a misfortune. Thank him because He knows you. In all things give thank to Him.

God bless you

Rev Joshua Obeng-Nyarko