I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. John 15:1
“One reason pruning is needed is the fact that the bush produces more buds than it can bring to full maturity. Any bush that is alive and thriving is producing more and more buds every cycle. And any person or business that is thriving is doing the same. Life begets life. That is normal. But it can be too much, as well.”
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) 43.
Jesus is the true vine. The Father in heaven is the gardener. And we are branches that produce buds.
And today I learned a fact of life. Our branches produce more buds than we can bring to maturity so pruning things, or in plain terms, not trying to do everything, helps us do the things we chose to do, more fruitful.
Here’s where this becomes challenging. Let’s say, like me, you have lots of capacity.
This can lead me to try to do more than I should and I could “do” myself to death. When I prune things, I can actually produce an insane amount of fruit by “not trying to do everything” but to do fewer things better.
I need to think more about this. Perhaps you do too? So how do we discern what to prune?
The key is in today’s Scripture, namely, abiding in the true vine of Jesus, and letting the Father, our gardener, cut off those buds that would not go to maturity, so that our lives produce both quality and abundant fruit.