Pruning…during this time of year we do a lot of pruning around our yards. We prune our trees to grow taller, stronger, and have larger trunks. We prune our bushes when they get unruly and hard to manage, and we pinch off our flowers that are finished blooming. Why do we do this? Pruning is necessary to grow, and become more healthy. If we don’t prune our plants of the dead flowers, they began to seed and take a lot of energy from the flowering plant. The energy is then focused in the wrong area. It is focused on the flower that has already bloomed, instead of putting energy into the flowers to come.
I think our lives our like that too. If we focus on the part of our lives that are not fulfilling and bring us down, then we are not living to our potential. If we have relationships that refuse to mend, grow, and heal then we cannot focus our energy on that. It’s unhealthy, and not where we want to be. God doesn’t want that either and will sometimes prune us of people, situations, and anything that keeps us from our potential to grow. Who doesn’t want to be pruned to grow healthy, robust, and full of new life? When we are attached to the vine of life, we become part of something that will grow in a severe drought, will grow in the monsoon rains, and will grow with partly cloudy days. Nothing will stop it from growing.
John 15 …I AM the True Vine, and My Father is the Vine-dresser. Any branch in Me that does not bear fruit (that stops bearing) He cuts away (trims off, takes away): and He cleanses and repeatedly prunes every branch that continues to bear fruit, to make it bear more and richer and more excellent fruit. Whoever lives in Me and I in him bears much (abundant) fruit. However, apart from Me (cut off from vital union with Me) you can do nothing. If a person does not dwell in Me, he is thrown out like a broken off branch, and withers, such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, and they are burned.