Jesus promised us that our growth would be rewarded with
pruning. We think, “Pruning? That’s cutting! That’s taking things away! That
can’t be good!”
Here are some details about pruning.
• Pruning carefully will drastically increase the
fruitfulness of the pruned tree. Cutting back results in a dramatic increase of
fruit!
• Pruning at the right spot strengthens frame of the base
plant. Pruning makes you stronger.
• Pruning is not actually optional (John 15:2). If we bear
fruit, we will be pruned. If we do not bear fruit, we’ll be cut back very
severely (but not killed), so that when we grow back, we’ll grow fruit. And
when we do, we’ll be pruned for even more fruit.
So how does he prune us?
In John 15:3 Jesus says, “You are already clean because of
the word I have spoken to you.” So him speaking his word to us is part of our
cleaning, our pruning. This is him speaking to us, mostly through the Book, and
a lot of that is about how to respond to the crap in our life.
In Luke 13:8, he gives us more detail. The conversation is
about pruning, and in that parable, Jesus says to the Father, “Leave [him]
alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it....”
Fertilizer in that day was manure: animal poo. So pruning
may show up as crap in our life.
Here’s an example: in Luke 9, the boys are arguing about
who's greatest. That's poo. The ambition to be great is actually good. The
competition apparently is the poo.
So in 9:48, Jesus prunes them. “Whoever welcomes this little
child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent
me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest.”
This is what pruning looks like. That’s not as bad as we
feared, is it?
