Pruning

Pruning

by Karen Michaelle

       Gardeners know that to get the absolute best out of some types of bushes, the act of pruning is required.  Without pruning, the bush may look okay, it may even produce some blooms, but it will always remain second-best to the full potential it was created to achieve.  What's especially impressive is that even bushes that seem well beyond any hope of survival, let alone ever being something to behold, can be brought back to amazing works of beauty with just a little pruning.

And so it is with us.  God wants nothing less than for us to be our absolute best.  John 15:1-2 speaks of this so perfectly.  "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful."  
  
     Now pruning bushes is one thing, but just the thought of being pruned as a human is altogether something different!  Although my initial reaction to even considering this is "yeah, thanks but no thanks" I've since learned how beneficial it is.

     I adore gardening, but I detest pruning!  So much so that unless my desire to have a certain type of bush in my garden far outweighs my pruning disdain I will skip it altogether, choosing instead one that does not require the task.  Not always able to resist the unique beauty some bushes will add to my garden, I have relented and planted some that require pruning.  God has often used the time I prune these bushes, the actual act of pruning itself, to remind me how important it is to Him that I too reach the full potential He has created me to be.

     Looking back over my life, there were attributes of who I had become that God knew were standing in the way of me being at my best.  I now know that He stood at the ready for many years, just itching to get to work on me, His little topiary.  Though I often felt Him trying to get my attention, I resisted His call for a long time.  I am so grateful that He did not give up on me! 

    
          Since finally reaching the end of myself, and giving my life, my heart and my all to Christ, my loving Maker has set to work on me.  Where I approach the task of pruning with haphazard impatience, God has approached it with gentle love.  He has taken His time, delicately cutting away all those things that have weighed me down and prevented me from being my best.

From the first snip, a new me began to emerge, the real woman He had always intended.  Each subsequent pruning has further removed things that were never meant to be there; those very things that weren't good for me anyway, and had weighed my heart down to the point of deep despair.  In their place new growth has emerged...of beauty, compassion and a desire to minister to the hearts of others.  None of this would have been realized, would have come to fruition, without His pruning.

As a woman in continual new bloom, I realize how blessed I am to have been chosen for the most glorious garden, despite the work that my adoring gardener knew would be required to bring about my beauty.  I long to continue flourishing under His loving hand, and I believe until the day I die, He will continue this essential act of tending, lovingly focused on bringing about my full potential.  In the process, He will bestow the deep peace and joy that can only come from truly knowing and yielding to Him.  I wouldn't have it any other way!