Pruning

No, it’s not eating a lot of prunes, silly blog reader. It’s a term used a lot in the gardening world; you know, since I’m an avid gardener. Ok, that was sarcasm. But today, I heard it explained in a sermon, and it stuck with me.

From what I could gather, pruning is cutting things off so they can grow back stronger and healthier. So a gardener might go in and prune trees, bushes, stems of flowers, whatever. It’s kinda like when you’re trying to grow your hair long, so you go and get a trim. Am I right? Ladies? Someone? Whatever, I don’t need your affirmation.

So I thought about this pruning idea some more, and it made a lot of sense. And I think God wants to do a lot of pruning in our lives, but we’re too scared to let Him do His work. Because in our minds, or at least mine…I’m not including you after you left me hanging in the second paragraph…taking something away or cutting something off is scary. It’s gone. And how can you ever guarantee that it’ll grow back? But I don’t think that’s the point. God doesn’t prune our lives so that we have to start over and end up with the same stuff. God prunes our lives so that we get something better in its place. Or else, God would be a silly gardener. Or at least one that just wastes a lot of time.

Someone once told me that God doesn’t take away good things to give us bad things in their place. And I think this pruning business goes along with that. I think God takes away good things to make them great things. And yeah, it’s pretty hard to see that when He’s got some sharp clippers chopping up your life; but if we have the patience and endurance to wait and see what grows back, I’m reluctant to say we’d be disappointed.

Is it bad that I want to call Him “Jesus Scissorhands”? Probably. So I’ll end with the following, instead: “we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.”