Gardening Tips from a Novis

My behaviour alarms me at times. My ability to forget so easily all the great things God has done in my life scares me too. My faith is so weak and I don’t have a problem sharing that with you. Infact I am commanded to so you can pray for me. But how quick I am as a believer to accept the good things in life that God provides and then when a storm comes how quick I am to retreat back to old ways of thinking and behaviors ..The Bible so many times addresses God as a Gardner and us a plants…I never understood the comparison until I worked at the landscape dept at my church for three months. Peggy would constantly have us pruning trees. Trees that for all intensive purposes looked beautiful and healthy we pruned them. One day I asked Peggy why we constantly prune back seemingly healthy trees …and she explained that the pruning of the tree though in the short term makes the tree less attractive to the eye in some cases in the long run makes that tree stronger so when the storm comes it can stand in the midst of it…

This makes me wonder How many times in my young Christian walk have I experienced being pruned and how many times I have mistaken the pruning for an attack. or a storm. see the trees have that same phenomenon if you were a tree and someone was taking sheers to your limbs you would feel the sensations of an attack. It would be painful. And just like me at the time not understanding the purpose that is done for the endurance and the health and well being of the tree. It also makes me realize that even though the pruning sucks the tree is never ever uprooted and transplanted to avoid the storm that is inevitably to come.  But is left there in the elements to endure it.  Sometimes the trees are even tied down to a post so the storm cannot move it.  In our lives this happening can make us feel trapped. See unlike trees we humans have the ability to reason and think.  When we start to feel trapped our tied down to something even something healthy we start looking for ways to undo the ties and escape…What we are missing is the knowledge that is for our own good we are tied down and we are pruned.

It is such a painful process..I have been an escape artist most of my life. Being pruned hurts being tied down and anchored somewhere is not what I am accustomed too this is taking some getting used to.  But today I get this much at least that the pruning is not an attack its done because my Gardner who is a great Gardner loves me and cares for me…and by the way even though in the short term stuff looks real ugly the pruning gives exposure to sunlight to the hidden parts of the tree so that they can begin to be healthy branches too….and it also in the end makes the tree look more balanced and full. but the process is never ending. Just the like Peggy the pruning will never stop…and it will never be anything but painful. It’s a process of life…

My understanding is that if I don’t accept the pruning and don’t get tied down to a post sometimes I might get blown away by the storm and die.  I am so grateful for the people who are in my life who see me at my ugliest points and still love me…the one thing I am good at is sin I am so natural at it it comes without thinking…doing the right thing is painful at times and hard because it requires thought determination and the cutting away of self….

I know that we are all gonna screw it all up big time we are all going to hurt each other because that is our nature to do so…that is not a male or female trait or specific to just this guy or that girl that is a human trait…but We do today have the ability to be cleansed and renewed and have the mind and heart of Christ which was always forgiveness to everyone without prejudice and love to all people despite the wrongs done to us…

The fact that Jesus Christ only one time actually displayed anger outwardly in recorded history but 100s of accounts of random acts of love and compassion tell me that we as Christians are missing who Jesus really is because me for one have a unique knack for displaying my anger far more then I do my love and compassion….

I am being pruned again and it sucks. But its not the storm the storm is sure to come this is the part where I get stronger for the storm. I am tied down to a post and I cannot escape I have got to endure this storm because my Gardner who loves me and cares for me is not interested in removing me from my environment but He is interested in me lasting in the storm and doing so with ease and grace…because that is how He gets the Glory…That is how He becomes Known to men.