Pruning makes me cringe. Why would you cut back something growing so wild and free?!

When we were living in Asia there was always someone on the streets or on the campus pruning away – cutting back limbs, shaping bushes, etc. The place was immaculate in terms of gardens (not always in other terms.Ha!). It would frustrate me sometimes. In the fall gardeners would literally shake the trees until all the pretty oranges, reds and yellows fell and then they SWEPT THEM UP and took them away.

.

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“Wait, wait! Come back with my fall! (cry face)”

Pruning makes me cringe and those gardeners took it too far – let a girl have her fall (we all know BASIC girls LOVE their fall).

Yet, reading John 15, I thought, “Wow…that’s amazing.” and lo and behold it’s about pruning:

“Every branch in me that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

– John 15:2 –

 

Pruning means to cut back – to cut back dead or overgrown branches or stems and often times to significantly cut back seemingly good and fruitful branches. But we can’t let the definition stop there because it goes on:

Pruning means to cut away to especially increase fruitfulness and growth.

I don’t know if you’ve read the Bible very much, but God is obsessed with gardening. He loves it. He created it and he started life with and in a garden. If you looked at the earth as one giant garden – with mountains as statues, great rushing rivers and waterfalls as fountains, different regions blooming at perfect times all year round –  it is the most amazing garden. It surpasses all gardens because it encompasses all gardens. And that’s just nature. The Lord also tends to his people as a master gardener tends to his garden. In John 15 he speaks of us being branches of a vine, who is Jesus.

I realized that this season of my life is one of significant pruning. And, oh, have I sure been cringing. Branches that once seemed alive in my life have been cut back and it has left confusion. I once felt like I knew where I should go next and what I should do next without much questioning and now I don’t really know anything. I once felt that my passions could flow out from me more freely whereas now I feel stifled. I once felt like I was on a great adventure even while living in Central Illinois and suddenly I feel stuck. I once didn’t have to make decisions because of illness and now I do. I once lived in a foreign place and now I find myself disillusioned with being back stateside. I once felt little guilt for how I lived and now I feel guilty existing in such privilege.

Many of these branches were good branches and the Lord has cut them away. And I hate the thought of someone saying, “Oh, well you know that God prunes us for good purposes and teaches us through it.” While a very nice reminder, it makes me feel like they think I don’t understand that. I do – I believe that, but first we have to address that IT SUCKS.

IT. SUCKS.

 

 

Pruning makes us cringe. It hurts. It’s confusing. It brings anxiety. It takes away something GOOD and therefore leaves aching.

Any intelligent gardener knows that when he cuts a branch away, that vine or tree will freak out. It starts to send its resources to the wound to heal it – its sap and nutrients go into overdrive and other areas of the vine go under stress so that it can heal that part. It can even bring it close to death and if the vine doesn’t have enough nutrients and vitality itself to send to the wound, it will die as a result of such pruning.

THIS is why these words Jesus said are flooring:

“I am the vine; you are the branches.”

– John 15:5 –

JESUS is the vine. Oh, praise God! Hallelujah! God himself is the vine sustaining you as times of pruning hurt and bring stress and confusion and may even bring you close to death. God is such a Master Gardener that he becomes part of us – a vine sustaining its branches directly and personally. Jesus himself, who was at one time cut away from the vine in his death and being separated from God on our behalf, is the one who sustains us with his Spirit –  who put all creation into motion and brought him back from death:

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

– Romans 8:11 –

 

 

Life from death. That’s the fuller picture of pruning that I need to understand because otherwise, pruning makes me cringe.

Mourning the loss of good branches happens, as it takes time for new branches to come. This season I have been mourning and I am wondering what or where those new branches will be. It’s confusing. There isn’t much fruit right now. But in reading John 15, a fuller vision for pruning is given – one that makes me wonder rather than cringe. New dreams and hope over these forthcoming branches began to emerge in me, and perhaps that right there is these new branches starting to grow – branches that are promised to bear even more fruit than the last.

 

 

May you wonder even as you ache, Tayler