Pruning

Thursday morning I headed out of my door with a skip in my step.  I was finally headed back to the classroom and I was certain there was nothing that could get me down.  Then I walked out of my building.  What I saw didn’t ruin my mood, but it did cause a frown to pass across my face.  Sometime while I was enjoying my last full day in pajama pants someone had been very busy out front of our apartment buildings.  What two days before had been sturdy little trees boasting numerous (albeit bare) branches had now become these glorified sticks.

The Chinese approach to spring cleaning and pruning at times mystifies me.  Their measures often appear quite drastic and severe. However, there’s a fairly good chance they know a bit more about tending plants than I do.  Three years ago, these very same trees were planted in a similar very stick-like state outside our building.

As foreign teachers, we mocked the sticks mercilessly.  What were the planters thinking?  It would take years before these sticks could resemble anything close to a tree!  Needless to say, we all ate our words when we returned to campus in August to find these:

And the following spring, our little sticks were bursting forth with flowers.  Maybe those Chinese gardeners did know what they were doing after all.

This history of our sticks passed through my mind as I headed off to class.  There’s something about pruning that we seem to naturally despise.  The process, after all, is not in the least bit beautiful.  In fact, it is often the very parts that appear to be teeming with life that get cut off in the process of pruning.  What’s left behind ends up looking more dead than alive.  In fact, the naive passerby may scoff and doubt that life, never mind abundant life, could ever come from that.

How tempting is it to avoid pruning?  To the outside world, this avoidance is one way to keep up the appearance of life and fruit.  We may continue to flower, but we’ll never grow to our full potential.  We were made to bear fruit abundantly, and the simple fact is that such bearing requires much pruning.  Pruning that at times may by all appearances seem to be draining the life right from us.  But should we have patience, life–abundant life–awaits us.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  Every branch that bears fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.  No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.  If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit, apart from me you can do nothing.  This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit.