The great thing about being the sole groundskeeper to a forty-acre campus is that I spend a lot of time alone...time that I use to listen to what God has to say to me.
A few weeks ago, my pastor spoke about the necessity of pruning....a very basic sermon; one that, as a horticulturist, I tend to 'zone out' during because I know all the parallels pruning presents to our spiritual lives. Get the bad stuff out, let in the light....yada yada yada.
But this week, I spent several hours pruning a few dozen overgrown rose bushes. Since I know what a rose bush is 'supposed' to look like, I know that these particular specimens were in dire need of a hard pruning. I know that. I'm the gardener. I'm the one who's responsible. I'm the one who looks at these plants every single day, seeing how they look from afar, and from close-up. But last summer, do you know what people were saying about these rose bushes? The residents and employees were raving about how beautiful the roses were, and how they had so many blooms. These were all true assessments. But these compliments all came in the middle of the summer, when the leaves and blooms camouflaged the inner structure of the plants. I knew that winter would come, and the leaves would fall off, and then I could visualize what needed to be done.
So last week, I dug in. I started cutting away at some of these 'beautiful' roses. Only to find that under the beautiful, fruitful exterior was a framework that was riddled with death and deformation. Instead of being vigorous and healthy, I found lots of brittle dead branches and many healthy ones that were fighting for light and air.
Cutting out the dead part is the obvious thing to do. Even a 'non-gardener' could figure that out. A good gardener knows when it's necessary to cut out some of the good parts. Two good branches will cross one another, rubbing away the tender new flesh, which leads to disease of the entire plant. And sometimes a branch is growing and flowering, but it's growing in the wrong direction. As a gardener, I must analyze which of the branches to cut, and which to leave.
Getting the bad stuff out of my life is the no-brainer. Sinful, indulgent, undisciplined behavior has no place in the life of a Christ follower. But what about all the good stuff? What about the stuff that looks beautiful... the stuff that has lots of blooms .... the stuff that everyone is complimenting? I have to leave all of those things to the Gardener. Because the Gardener sees the big picture. He sees if one good thing is suffocating another. He knows which good things should stay, and which ones should be cut out. And I must remember that in the spring, I'll be a healthier, more fruitful plant if I let the Gardener do His job.
