Monday, October 20, 2008

Pruning

My poor fig tree has been reduced to a shadow of its former glory.
Hurricane Ike did a number on it. I didn't notice until a couple of weeks after the fact that it had been blown/twisted away from the fence. The result was that we had to prune it pretty severely to save it.

You can see the "before" of it here . Kind of sad, but sometimes that is just the way things are.

I know I don't like to be pruned. I don't like having those things cut away from me that are distracting to the purpose for my life, and may be even dangerous to me. We humans are just that way. We want to go on doing what we want to do. :)

But if we allow The Master Gardener to prune us, He can bring us into a place of greater fruitfulness. And that's what will happen with my fig tree, too. It will be better than ever next year. Had I left it as it was, it would have surely fallen. Sometimes that's what happens with us, too, if we don't allow God to trim the parts off from us that are hindering us.


I'm off this week on a trip to Branson, Missouri for a prayer conference. For sure this is a time when our country needs prayer!

Have a great day!

3 comments:

Oiyi said...

You have a green thumb! Sadly, I have a black thumb.

Thank you for the comment about Melody. It warms my heart to know that people have been reading since her birth. She has changed so much since she was born. It's nice to looks back at the photos.

Annie said...

Food for thought - thank you

Susan said...

How cool that the tree you had to prune back is the same tree Jesus used in his illustrations. Amazing too is that it stood its ground during the storm. My sister lives in Houston and said the difference with Ike was it stayed and stayed. Thanks for getting us to stop and think about things important.