Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh – Charles Spurgeon

PAUL had a secret grief somewhere, I know not where, but near his heart, continually, wherever he might be, irritating him; perpetually vexing him and wounding him. A thorn, a commonplace thing, such as might grow in any field, and fall to any man’s lot. Thorns are plentiful enough, and have been since Father Adam scattered the first handful of the seed. A thorn—nothing to make a man remarkable, or give him the dignity of unusual sorrow. Some men boast about their great trials, and there is something in feeling that you are a man greatly afflicted; but a thorn could not give even this wretched satisfaction. It was not a sword in the bones, or a galling arrow in the loins, but only a thorn, about which little could be said. Everyone knows, however, that a thorn is one of the most wretched intruders that can molest our foot or hand. Those pains which are despised because they are seldom fatal, are frequently the source of the most intense anguish—toothache, headache, earache, what greater miseries are known to mortals? And so with a thorn. It sounds like a nothing; “it can be easily removed with a needle,” say those who feel it not, and yet how it will fester; and if it remain in the flesh it will generate inconceivable torture. Such was Paul’s trial; a secret smarting, incessantly irritating, something—we do not know what.