What Are You Pruning?

Whether you are on “Team Artificial” or “Team Real”, Christmas trees are one of the most popular traditions we take part in during the holiday season. Now that Christmas is over, the trees will start to come down, their lights and decorations removed, and things will seem a little more blah until the spring flowers and greenery start coming out.

One of the coolest things about a real Christmas tree is how it gets its beautiful shape. If you have seen any of the varieties of Christmas trees in their natural form, then you know they don’t start out in the same shape you purchase from the Christmas tree lot. They have wayward branches, are scraggly and misshapen, and have holes where you can see through to the trunk.

Christmas trees farmers start shaping the trees when they are very young, shaping and pruning their branches so the trees produce thick growth. The ultimate goal is to produce a Christmas tree so thick that when it is old enough to harvest and sell it is full, cone shaped, and without holes.

When I did some further research on the benefits of pruning different trees and shrubs, this is what I found:

• Apart from promoting a fuller appearance, pruning makes the tree/shrub grow stronger thus providing the proper health of the plant. Young plants will benefit the most in the long run and will require less corrective pruning as the plant matures.

• Pruning trees and shrubs encourages healthy fruit and flower production.

• Reasons to prune plants include deadwood removal, shaping, improving or sustaining health, reducing risk from falling branches, preparing nursery specimens for transplanting, and both harvesting and increasing the yield or quality of flowers and fruits.

If you reread the information about pruning above and substitute the words “me” or “us” for tree/shrub/plants and think of the words “flowers” and “fruit” as qualities that make us look more like Jesus, you will see a wonderful illustration of God as the Master Gardener in our lives. He sees the areas in our lives that are holding us back from looking more like Jesus and prunes them, cutting them out of our lives so that others can see His love.

When God cuts someone out of our life or takes something away it can be very painful or disappointing, but He does it because He wants us to grow in a different direction. Without His pruning, we may never see that on our own!

Is God pruning you?

• Is He cutting something out of your life?

• Is He using your boss or a teacher to point out and remove a lazy attitude that is keeping you from bearing fruit?

• Has He removed a relationship that was taking you in the wrong direction?

• Has He removed an activity that was keeping you too busy and preventing you from reaching out to a friend, family member, or others who need you?

When God is pruning an area of your life you need to remember that He is doing it because He loves you. Trust Him during those times to help you grow in your relationship with Him and show His love to others.

“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

I am so grateful for my Master Gardener who will continue to prune me to be more like Jesus until the day He takes me home.