Pruning, A Hard Reality

"I will sing for the one I love
a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside.

² He dug it up and cleared it of stones
and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
but it yielded only bad fruit.

³ "Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.

⁴ What more could have been done for my vineyard
than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
why did it yield only bad?" Isaiah 5:1-4

I woke up this morning thinking about grapevines and pruning. And tomatoes and pruning. I love tomatoes, especially growing them and it's amazing how a life lesson will fit in so beautifully today with what is on my mind.

See, last year, for the first time, I started growing tomatoes completely from seed. It was a complete learning experience for me, because I also started with heirloom tomatoes. When you go to the local nurseries and buy established plants, usually they're not heirlooms- which means they are more like tomato plants than tomato vines. I grew tomato vines. As each seed burst forth into seedlings I became increasingly excited. I watched and tended each plant carefully as they sprouted and grew and then really started to grow. When they were almost two feet tall, it finally warmed up enough to plant them into the garden, so I did that. And then watched with joy as each plant stretched out towards the sun as if in a race and continued to grow. I had to add to the trellises, they grew so tall and lush! But there was one thing I didn't do. I didn't prune my tomato plants at all. My reasoning was that I had such a small garden and only so much room for tomatoes, that all the branches that could bear fruit should, and there was my downfall. Oh, I had tomatoes all right, but I had so many more green ones. And I had so many blossoms simply fall off because that one main tomato stem with just one root system could not pull enough nutrients out of the soil to sustain so many branches on the one plant. I didn't prune, and as a result, my plants suffered, as often times the energy the plant had was sent to sickly branches, or worse- to branches without a lick of fruit on it.

I learned a very valuable lesson that pruning is absolutely necessary for good growth, and I suspect the very same thing with grapevines. It's the same for fruit and nut trees- good pruning ensures the absolute best growth. What is completely ironic, and now I see God's hand in everything is that the same time I was learning my lesson about pruning tomatoes, I was learning a lesson about pruning in my life. In our life, actually, because we learned about pruning as a family. God wanted to do something new, something great for us, and wanted us to bear the best fruit possible, but He saw a need to trim away some branches that were using valuable energy that could be diverted elsewhere. God placed in us a desire to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and there were fruitless branches that were holding us back from bearing that fruit.

Don't let anyone ever fool you into thinking that pruning is easy. Because the branches that were needing to be pruned were the church we were in, and after building the friendships and relationships over the years, it was so incredibly hard to realize that God wanted us to be elsewhere. What we didn't expect was how hard and painful it was actually going to be. While one part of us was excited to move on and find the Spirit-driven church that God had for us, the other part of us was trying to cling to the relationships we'd established there. And it hurt over the first few weeks after we'd left, seeing people who were our friends look the other way when we saw them. We'd made different choices in our life that they didn't understand, and to them, we'd basically said that they weren't good enough for us. And while that isn't true in the least, what is true is that God was doing some serious pruning. How would it be for us to go on to a Spirit led and driven church, and then get together with our friends and share all the wonderful things that God would do in us? I'll tell you exactly how, they wouldn't understand, and they would become alarmed, and concerned for us, and without even realizing it, the devil would try to use our closest friends to change our path.

I would be lying if I said it has gotten easier. I mean, it has in some regard, because we have chosen to wish nothing but the best for our friends and our old church community. We pray for them often, and have nothing but love for them. And at the same time, we're slowly forging new friendships and new beginnings- friendships that will encourage and support the new growth that God is doing in us.

The verses above in Isaiah reminded me that growing good fruit takes work. You can plant the choicest vines, create the ideal atmosphere, but unless you give that fruit the pruning it needs, and the fertilizing it needs, the produce from it is going to falter. The vines need care and proper attention. And fertilizer- oh, that wonderful fertilizer which comes from the Holy Spirit and encourages the blossoms to swell with beautiful fruit. And while at times, the pruning can be painful, the results at the end will be completely worth it. The new fruit will come, and will be even juicier and greater than the fruit was before. God knows exactly what he is doing when it is time to prune. Rest in Him and let the Master Gardener do what He does best, let Him tend His garden and His vineyard.

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. ²He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. ³You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. ⁴Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." John 15:1-4