Why Poison Ivy, Lord?

Poison Ivy has never been my friend.

Over the years, I have had dozens of horrendous cases of that oozy, relentlessly itchy rash all over me. It’s even been in my eye, causing it to swell completely shut. Twice.

After the sixth or seventh horrible case requiring a shot and more than three rounds of steroids, I made an effort to recognize what this insidious plant looks like. Since I love the woods, I figured it would be in my best interest to learn how to avoid this awful cause of such enormous suffering.

Small shoots of this nuisance appear out of nowhere in my flower beds every summer. I do my best to pull them up by the roots, and then wash multiple times with my special poison ivy soap.

I have come to hate this plant and would curse it every time I saw it.

This summer, our church’s youth group went on a mission trip to Tennessee. The house where my team was assigned was an entire farmland of poison ivy. I have never seen so much in one place before in all of my life.

One of the tasks we were asked to do was to clean out the back of shed that housed what turned out to be 90 bags of trash. In order to get to this spot, however, there was no way to avoid trampling on literally hundreds of poison ivy plants.

None of our teens complained even once about what they were walking through. Maybe they didn’t realize that every step they took was causing the urushiol oil from each plant underfoot to be released. This is the actual villain that causes the allergic reaction in most people. After my third trip through this mess, I knew we would need some divine intervention. 

This is when I got in God’s face. I was angry that He even made this stuff and wondered if He actually did or if was a result of the fall, but regardless, I pled mercy and protection over all of us as our kids performed these acts of love with nothing but pure servant hearts. I told Him that I knew it would be a total miracle if we each didn’t get a whopping case of poison ivy rash, but that I would surely give Him all the glory if he would keep us protected from this evil oil.

I did throw my shoes away after our week was over, not wanting to take any chances on packing those puppies in my suitcase. There had to be enough urushiol oil on them to give our entire town a complete itchy nightmare.

On my walk around our neighborhood, there is a wooded area that is also full of poison ivy (not nearly the same amount as this lady’s yard, but enough to be concerned).  During my morning time with Papa, I asked again, “Why, God? Why poison ivy? Did You actually create this stuff? Why would You do that?”

And I got an answer!  He told me that poison ivy is a reminder of how insidious evil can be. Poison ivy this time of year is lush and green and looks like any other normal plant. But lurking inside of its leaves lie the potential to cause immeasurable suffering.

If evil always looked awful, it would be easy to stay away from it. But evil is more often, a counterfeit of the truth. A counterfeit looks so close to the genuine, that it is very easy to be deceived.

As I gazed at this patch of poison ivy interspersed among the mayapples, dandilions, and other various grasses, I realized that if one was not alert, it would be so easy to miss. Poison Ivy is a real-life reminder of how satan, the deceiver and father of lies is right in our midst, waiting for an open door to catch us unaware.

I know all too well the unfortunate potential of carelessness around poison ivy. I also know beyond a shadow of a doubt how God performed a gigantic miracle by keeping the menacing urushiol oil from harming our teens as they poured their energy into being Jesus for someone they didn’t even know.

Now, I also know that poison ivy is a reminder that we need to be aware and alert because we have an enemy who is waiting for us not to notice.

I’m working on gratitude for poison ivy. That might just take a bit longer.