Write About Now

Before moving to California, land of the eternal growing season, I associated Mother’s Day with planting the summer garden. Although I could have planted the flowers and herbs on my porch anytime this spring, some of the east-coast mentality remains and I used Mother’s Day weekend to beautify my backyard with impatiens, begonias, and fuschia (40% of which have already been eaten by slugs. But I’ll save that for the blog post about Genesis 3:17.) In addition to filling my little clay pots with flowers, I browsed Martha Stewart Living magazine for inspiration. I was struck by this excerpt from an article about pruning fruit trees:
Left to themselves, trees will produce fruit, but most will be of poor quality. And it will come in spurts, with a heavy crop one year, and likely nothing for several years afterward…..Sunlight provides fuel for fruit production. That’s why a congested, neglected tree bears fruit only on the periphery of its canopy, with the bulk of the fruit commonly borne toward the top. By thinning growth with pruning shears and saw, however, [you] open avenues for light to penetrate and encourage fruit development deep inside the canopy, as well. By stimulating the growth of some branches and slowing that of others, [the gardener] ensures that upper branches don’t overshadow lower ones and leave them barren….On a mature tree, annual pruning is mostly limited to reducing congestion and eliminating unfruitful wood—branches that do not bear fruit and divert energy from those that do…

John 15 reminds us that God is the master gardener, who “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.” The God who created fruit trees surely understood the ramifications of this analogy—the process of growing usually includes pain.

Left to my own devices, the fruit I produce will also be inconsistent and of poor quality. Like the tree, I need a skilled gardener to cut away the “unfruitful wood”— the relationships, habits, and activities—diverting energy from real growth. I’m grateful God wants his light to touch the deepest parts of me. Although the process often hurts, I can see God’s purposes as he cuts away the overgrowth in my life.