Read John 15:1-4 NIV
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
Fall is here, and so begins my garden prep for the winter. As part of that preparation, I trimmed a couple of my lilac bushes. Their leaves had thinned out, and the blooms, which are normally prolific, were sparse and very small in comparison to years past. So I set to chopping. And yes, I do mean chopping! There were several large branches that were dead – those went first. And then I cut off about a third of each bush. It may take a little while for them to produce their big, beautiful blooms again, but my hope is that a good trimming will bring life back to the bushes.
Before trimming, my bush was “fine.” It had green leaves…although few. It had blooms…although small and few. It probably would have produced similarly next year. But what I wanted for my bush was for it to thrive and for the sweet scent of lilacs to fill my yard. If that is what I want, then a good pruning is what it needed.
The same is true for us. Today’s verses remind us that to be healthy in our relationship with God, sometimes we need a little pruning to fully be who God is calling us to be. Sometimes we need to have the dead stuff – the things that distract us and keep us from a relationship with God – cut out. Sometimes we need to prune back our crazy life and get back to the basics so that we can let God soak in deeper; to fill us and feed us with what is most important, so that we can grow in the ways we are meant to grow.
Pruning a plant takes away all the excess and says to the plant – sink your energy into what you are connected to in order to grow better. Pruning in us – does the same thing. Let’s sink our energy into Jesus and allow him to cut away the stuff that doesn’t matter so that we can be more connected to Him.
