Recently I have noticed people working in their yards more now that it is warmer out.Everyone is busy weeding, raking, clipping their grass, and pruning their trees. But I can't help but notice how much extra effort my neighbors put into making their yard perfect. It looks like it is right out of a gardening TV show or something. I mean there isn't a leaf, rock, blade of grass, or piece of dirt out of place. Everything just shows the care and attention taken for it.
All of the trimming and pruning reminds me of a part of a book i read recently, in which the gardener of a vast orchard is pruning the grapevines; not only pruning them, but stripping the branches off until they are bare. Also in the book, the gardener plants the vines in rocky, hard soil. Here is an excerpt from the book:
"Consider this, I'm the gardener and I know what the vine needs in order to thrive. You see only the stripping, but I cut the vine in order to restore it, I take away from it to enrich it. You hold in your hand a withering branch and that's all you see now, but I know I have given the plant a new life. The vine needs to suffer. Going down into this earth-fighting to survive among the stones and lime rock-this is what gives it its unique character and aroma. These grapes will create a wine few other vineyards can compare with, not because their life was easy, but because they had to struggle to survive."
~Bardia the gardener, Harvest of Rubies by Tessa Afshar
A good gardener prunes all of the previous branches, leaving the stem bare so more fruit is produced without the old branches hindering new growth. It has been proven that vines that are pruned more than the minimum produce a much greater harvest than those that weren't. Gardeners of vineyards have also said if the ground is hard and rocky the vine will have to fight to stay alive. If it does, the fruit is much richer in character and flavor than if life were perfect and easy. Suffering is needed to improve the flavor of the grape, but the gardener only added to its suffering. The one who was an expert caretaker, the one who the plants depended on to survive makes it suffer even more by cutting and slashing it until there is pretty much nothing left. In the book, the gardener said he had to cut it in order to restore it; he took away from it to enrich it.
God is our expert gardener of our lives. He is carefully pruning you, cutting off all fruitless branches. Every experience is part of his pruning process. He cuts off areas of our lives that are dead or preoccupying our focus off of him; even if these areas of our lives are prosperous and perfect in our own eyes. Only the expert gardener would make us suffer and plant us in rocky ground to give us that unique character and sweet aroma of him that none other can compare to. The only way we develop that aroma of him is if we continue to fight to survive in the rocky soil while being stripped and cut. By continuing to trust the expert gardener who knows what He is doing-he isn't an amateur.
You are God's little vine. When life is overwhelming you with trials, don't worry. It is just God pruning you, carefully preparing you for a greater harvest. Trust the expert gardener, He knows what he is doing.
I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. He cuts off every branch of me that doesn't bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more. You are already pruned back by the message I have spoken.
~John 15:1-3
I hope you feel encouraged by this. God bless!! -Abigail
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