LovingHim-RaisingThem

This is our beautiful young apple tree, planted last year in our garden. Today was an emotional time for me and the tree.

Today was pruning day.

Today I stood in the rain and slowly picked every single tiny baby budding apple off, all 137 of them. Every one made me sad as I carefully removed it from its branch, ending its life prematurely. I remembered back to our trip to the garden centre to get the tree deliberating endlessly over which one to choose. I remembered back to the rock hard ground we had to use a pick axe on to plant the tree.

I did this pruning by my own free will even though it means no fruit this year. No watching the kids run out in the garden and eat an apple straight from the tree. No collecting and harvesting them,no turning them into crumbles and pickles to share and enjoy. Just nothingness in its place. It felt senseless, counterintuitive and painful to pick the healthy fruit from the healthy tree and put it straight in the compost.

So why did I do it?

Firstly the tree is too young and its branches too weak to support the weight of its fully grown fruit. The apples would have broken the branches they grew on, destroying the tree for future years to come.

Secondly it takes an incredible amount of nutrients for the tree to produce fruit which means those nutrients are not going into strengthening the roots and branches, maturing the tree and enabling it to grow and enjoy a long healthy life.

John 15 Jesus famous passage about the vine and branches that this blog is rooted in (excuse the pun!) tells of this very process. It says that God the gardener prunes every branch that doesn’t bear fruit and even some of the good fruit in our lives so we can be even more fruitful.

How often do we resist this?

Ive been avoiding pruning the tree for weeks. Today I struggled to do it. I kept thinking, ‘maybe it will be alright it doesn’t look too thin’ ‘maybe the man at the garden centre was being a bit extreme when he said prune ALL the fruit, maybe I will just leave a few..’

In my own life it’s even harder to remove things, lay things down and let things die, especially the good stuff. Im in a season of pruning now and its so painful. But just like the tree I want to grow strong roots and branches to bear the weight of the fruit that my life produces. Ive seen people over and over bloom too quick and break, its not a path I want to choose. In our world of instant gratification and overnight success stories the temptation to skip the maturing process is massive… Lets just be honest here, I planted an apple tree because I wanted apples! I exercise because I want to be strong. I write my book because I want it published. I don’t want to wait for these things and many other things in my life! But the Kingdom works in seasons and we must not be afraid of the pruning and fallow ones….A life that only wants to bear fruit is not sustainable.

So I leave you with a couple of questions to ponder;

Where might God be leading me to do some pruning?

Could a so called ‘loss’ or ‘failure’ actually be the kindness of the Lord in your life?

One day in years to come Im sure I will plant another tree and go through this pruning process again. I know that the experience will be less painful because I will have watched my current apple tree flourish because of the pruning I did today. But for now Im a young inexperienced gardener and its hard, I only the stories of those more experienced to spur me on. I only have the hope of what my little apple tree and little life will be in the future.

But today I picked all 137 apples off my tree, because I want it to have a strong future and provide fruit for many years to come.

Today that unseen hope was enough.