Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Matthew 7:19
“In the simple word “pruning” is the central theme of what a necessary ending is all about: Removing whatever it is in our business or life whose reach is unwanted or superfluous. In business and in life, executing the three types of necessary endings described above is what characterizes people who get results. (1) If an initiative is siphoning off resources that could go to something with more promise, it is pruned. (2) If an endeavor is sick and is not going to get well, it is pruned. (3) If it’s clear that something is already dead, it is pruned. This is the threefold formula for doing well in almost every arena of life.
Henry Cloud in Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2011) 22.
Did any of these three pruning areas stand out to you as an area of reflection related to your stewardship?
The first area stood out to me as directly related to generosity. Anything that siphons our resources from more promising areas needs pruning. Today’s Scripture links to the second and third area. Sick branches need care and dead ones get cut down. They become good for firewood.
The good part about pruning is that we start to understand it as the pathway for facilitating new and more fruitful life.
God help us prune our lives so they produce more of the fruits of the Spirit, one of which is generosity.
By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. Galatians 5:22-23
As fruit have been on my mind since reading this book, this bowl caught my eye. I snapped this photo of some delicious “cuties” in the United Club on my travels home from Asia. Imagine our lives producing an abundance with pruning.