Pruning and People

As spring creeps on the horizon, the time comes again for my favorite task of the year: pruning the blueberry bushes. It’s such a satisfying feeling to start with plants all overgrown, tangled, and scraggly from the winter and clip away until they become beautiful, healthy, and fit for another year of bearing fruit. One lovely spreading 30-year-old plant takes an hour or so to trim into shape – the first year I took on the job, it took something like a day. But I enjoy the work, and it pays off in the abundance of berries that load the branches to the ground in the summer months.

There are three things to look for when pruning the plants: dead wood, weak wood, and misplaced wood. The dead wood goes first – these are twigs whose brittleness, gray color and lichen coating indicate that they have no chance of bearing fruit. Once all they dead wood is gone, the pruner must evaluate the strength of the plant. One bush I pruned this year had sprouted dozens of spindly twigs – it had put its effort into quantity rather than quality. So I took off most of the leggy growth, giving the strongest branches the opportunity to get stronger with more of the plant’s energy invested in them. The final step of pruning is to look the plant over for any branches that are crossing each other or tangled together. Some can be gently untangled and keep on growing, but often, one twig or another has to go to make room for the plant to grow freely and to make picking the berries easier.

Year after year, as I circle the bushes with my pruning shears, I always imagine that I feel a little taste of the way God must feel as He looks at His children. I love the blueberry bushes, not because I particularly love blueberries, but because I find joy in caring for my plants, seeing them become beautiful, and because their fruitfulness gives satisfaction and credit to me, the tender. What I do is certainly for the benefit of the plants, but the ultimate goal and expectation is that they benefit me. God cares for us in much the same way, I think – He loves us, not because He can’t do without our little good deeds, but because He delights in tending what belongs to Him, in making us beautiful, and because the fruit that comes of His skillful care brings glory and joy to Him. He does His best for us, and He rightfully expects us to do our best for Him as a result.

So God prunes us. And is important to note, God only prunes His children, those who are alive in Christ. No one wastes time pruning dead plants – there were a few I sadly skipped this year because my clippers could do them no good. It is not enjoyable to be pruned, but it is proof of belonging to God’s family. Pruning comes in a few different areas. First, God targets the “dead wood” in us, the desires, habits, and activities that are opposed to Him and will never bring any fruit. God also prunes our “weak wood” – the parts of our life that are perhaps not inherently bad in themselves, but are doing nothing more than keeping us busy with a myriad of things that consume our time and energy, weakening our fruitfulness. And God seeks to trim up the “misplaced wood” of our lives, those good things that have got twisted out of their proper place and make our fruit hard to see, perhaps opening the door for weak and dead wood if uncorrected.

The difference, of course, between God’s children and blueberry bushes is that we humans can decide not to be pruned. And if we do, it will only leave us miserable and wondering why we feel so ugly. The longer we resist God’s efforts to prune us, the harder and more painful it will be when He finally wins. A plant that has grown untended for many years may take years to correct, and it will not bear fruit to its full potential until it has recovered from being rigorously pruned. God is patient with His children, even if they have resisted Him for a long time – He can wait for the fruit to show while He is working on us. And once we are shaped to His liking, He will keep on pruning to keep us there. If God is pruning you, cooperate! When the beautifully shaped you is bearing abundant fruit to delight your Pruner, you’ll be glad you did.

Every branch that does bear fruit

He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

John 15:2