Today—Tuesday, June 2—we canceled the “From the Stacks” livestream I normally do every Tuesday at 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Cornwall Alliance’s Facebook page. Why? Well, the official explanation went like this: “Dr. E. Calvin Beisner had an unfortunate battle with poison ivy during which the poison ivy won.”

Various folks posted condolences and wished me well.

I’m thankful for their condolences, but, really, the poison ivy didn’t win. True, I’m a “wounded warrior”—you should see all the weeping blisters on my forearms, ankles, and calves. (Then again, maybe not!) But I’m alive, and I’m going to recover over the next few weeks.

The poison ivy?

Above is a photo of two of the many stumps left after I sawed off the massive vines last Saturday and removed about seven feet of main trunk above them, depriving the vines above, and all their leaves, of water. (Those stumps are about 4-1/2 inches in diameter—major vines, they were!) Now the vines above, cut off from their source of water as shown below, are dying, and their leaves are shriveling.

Jesus said something relevant to that:

I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.

You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.

I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.

If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.

This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. [John 15:1–14]

The stumps? I’m treating those heavily with salt water, and if that doesn’t do the trick, I’ll turn to glyphosate. They’re going to die. So are about a dozen others that were growing up several other large trees along my driveway.

I, it’s true, live with highly irritating itching and burning for a while. But I live. And unlike those poison ivy vines, I’ll keep on living—for, I hope, a good many more years. And because for me to live is Christ, to die will be gain (Philippians 1:21), so I need not fear death but look forward to the resurrection.

So I’ve experienced a little bit of what comes with efforts to fulfill some teaching of Scripture.

Genesis 2:15 says, “Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.” God gave me a garden here in rural southwest Tennessee, and it needs some cultivating and some keeping—the latter word bearing the sense of guarding. I need to guard my little garden from nasty things that really don’t belong in it—like poison ivy (and the 3-1/2-foot cottonmouth water moccasin, highly poisonous, I had to kill last week when guests found it on our porch—I won’t bother them in the pond out back, but they’re not welcome on the porch!).

Genesis 1:28 says that after He had made man, male and female, in His own image and after His likeness, “God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'” I can’t subdue and rule all the earth, but I can subdue and rule the little piece of it over which God has given me ownership—stewardship, really, under His ultimate ownership.

In Genesis 3:17–18, after Adam and Eve had disobeyed God, the LORD said to Adam, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field.” Poison ivy doesn’t have thorns or thistles, but I’m confident that its poisonous oils fall in the same category. In this fallen world, and as a fallen and sinful man, I’m experiencing some of the consequences of Adam’s sin—and my own—as I battle with poison ivy on my land. But I battle in hope, knowing that I have the Sovereign’s mandate to subdue and rule.

And that hope is supercharged by something else: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved” (Romans 8:18–24).

Clearly I didn’t take adequate precaution to protect myself while I was cutting and hauling the vines away. A video I’d seen had persuaded me that as long as I used plenty of very hot water and strong grease-cutting dishwashing detergent and scrubbed hard and repeatedly within about two hours after exposure the poison ivy oil wouldn’t have time to get into my skin and I’d be fine. Now I know. Either I misunderstood, or the video was wrong.

But I’ve learned a lesson. Next time, I’ll wear a full hazmat suit!

Photos by E. Calvin Beisner