Enter the Poison Garden
Have you ever heard of the Poison Garden?
The Alnwick Garden [located in Alnwick, UK] plays host to the small but deadly Poison Garden—filled exclusively with around 100 toxic, intoxicating, and narcotic plants. The boundaries of the Poison Garden are kept behind black iron gates, only open on guided tours.
Visitors are strictly prohibited from smelling, touching, or tasting any plants.
Entry to The Poison Garden is included with your day ticket but please note tours are subject to availability.
Wait, what?! A garden filled with nothing but poisonous plants?!
A combination of dark, ivy-covered tunnels and flame-shaped beds creates an educational garden full of interest and intrigue, where the most dangerous plants are kept within giant cages. ... The Poison Garden is home to around 100 species of dangerous, toxic and harmful plants, each of which has the potential to severely injure you! These are some of the most dangerous to look (but not touch) out for on your tour:
Laburnum
Atropa Belladonna
Helleborus Odorus
Monkshood
Ricinus communis
Giant Hogweed
Opium Poppy
Gympie- Gympie
… and hundreds more!
Aparently, though quite deadly, these poisonous plants can be quite beautiful and alluring ...
This world is a veritable poison garden filled with all manner of temptations and worldly pursuits that can quite literally kill us!
God calls us to wander through this Poison Garden circumspectly, careful to not "touch" the poison all around us.
Long story short, enter the Poison Garden careful to obey all the warning signs!
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23, ESV).
"Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—" (Romans 5:12, ESV).
"Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death" (James 1:15, ESV).
"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:17, ESV).
I Shouldn't Be Alive
There’s a great tv show called I Shouldn’t Be Alive. Have any of you seen it?
In every episode of the show, a person or group of people end up in some dangerous situation and struggle to survive, whether in a desert, or an ocean, or a jungle, or the like. And in every episode, the situation gets so bleak that the viewer would fully expect the person or group of people to die. There appears to be no hope at all. But then, against all odds, the person is either rescued or they somehow find their way back to civilization, and survive.
There were six whole season of these heart pounding, nail biting survival stories. Here are the synopses of some of the shows just from the first season:
- - Traveling to Idaho to attend a funeral, a family from California becomes trapped in a blizzard; while trekking off to find help, a wrong turn leads them deep into the unforgiving wilderness.
- - A crew of five aboard a luxury yacht sailing from Maine to Florida that sank in a storm, leaving the crew adrift on a lifeboat with no food or water and menaced by sharks.
- - Three adventurers are captured by the Khmer Rouge and must either negotiate their release or take their chances escaping into the jungle.
- - A Hollywood camera crew in a helicopter crash into an active volcano they were filming. Rescue attempts are hampered by lava, toxic gases and bad weather ...
- - A plane crash in the Kalahari Desert leaves survivors without food or water, and two of them try to find help for other passengers who are injured.
Now, we could look at this show and talk about how it’s like our situation before we knew Jesus, how we were lost in our sin and felt like we had no hope, but then Jesus came and rescued us.
But in actuality, this doesn’t even come close to our situation!
In actuality, our situation was much worse, because we weren’t just close to dead — the Bible says that we were already dead in our trespasses and sins!
So Jesus didn’t just rescue us when we were close to not being able to make it on our own. Rather He made us alive when we were already dead!
"As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins ... " (Ephesians 2:1, NIV).
"... [E]ven when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved ..." (Ephesians 2:5, ESV).
I've Decided to Carry Narcan
The drug problem has gotten so bad in our major cities, that Kyle Clark, a journalist and newscaster on 9News, Denver, Colorado, tweeted out this week that he has decided to carry Narcan* with him at all times.
“It’s a simple thing that we can do to save lives, as fentanyl kills hundreds of Coloradans a year. The City of Denver is now mailing Narcan to any resident who asks for it. … All across Colorado, you can ask for Narcan at a pharmacy and get it without a prescription.
"If you know someone who is having an opioid overdose, you can easily administer Narcan as easily as you do an allergy spray, and potentially save their life. And it can’t hurt them or someone else accidentally.
"We learn how to do the Heimlich Maneuver on the off chance that we could someday use it to save a life. Same thing with CPR.
“I’m gonna carry Narcan; and I ask you to consider it, too.”
Note that Narcan does NOTHING to stop substance abuse. In fact, even its lifesaving, overdose-reversing effects are strikingly temporary, and further medical intervention has to be immediately sought, following its administration.
As such, some commentators were quick to point out that such efforts might save a life “in the moment,” but the person will still die if their addiction is not permanently addressed.
*[Narcan according to the SAMHSA, is “a medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designed to rapidly reverse opioid overdose. It is an opioid antagonist—meaning that it binds to opioid receptors and can reverse and block the effects of other opioids, such as heroin, morphine, and oxycodone, [and fentanyl."]
As Christians, we’ve been given the life-saving remedy that can save not just the body, but the very soul of a man. But do we carry it with us at all times? Are we prepared to administer the cure at a moment's notice? Do we even recognize the enormity and the urgency of all the dying souls around us? And we're not just talking about addicts.
We are confronted daily by the walking dead – in our classrooms and offices, and subway cars, and grocery stores; on our sidewalks, and highways, and street corners; even in our churches, and in our own living rooms! People all around us are spiritually dying and need the cure of the saving grace of Jesus.
Clark is right. We’re willing to learn the Heimlich Maneuver and CPR. Some might even be willing to carry Narcan. But will we carry the truth of the Gospel both in word and deed, always at the ready to share with a dying soul?
“But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.” 1 Pet 3:15 (NKJV)
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Rom 1:16 (ESV)
“For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” Rom 10:13-14 (ESV)