Learning the need of pruning this year.
This winter we had two really bad winter storms. The worst I’ve ever seen in all 15 years of living here. We were iced in for an entire week with both storms. Branches that held strong against countless tornadic storms snapped with the weight of the ice.
Pruning The Dead And Damaged Places
Pruning For New Growth
The ice looked beautiful while it was here but what you didn’t see was the damage it had done to the plants and trees. The tips of the rose bushes and the other shrubs looked the same at first but then the damage became apparent. Soon the branches died and the plant was sending all of its energy to those dead places trying to revive it. If we would have left the dead parts on the hydrangea for example it would have had just brown sticks dry and lifeless and maybe a couple of leaves at the bottom of the plant but no flowers would grow. We had to get in there and prune out what was dead and unable to produce life. Only then did the leaves start to grow and flowers start to form.
For the same reasons, God prunes us. Not out of anger or malice but love.
Look at John chapter 15:1-8
Read it and then ask yourself, how do I know that I am being pruned?
God prunes the damaged places on us so there is room for the new growth- and so we don’t go through life dragging it with us. Sure it may hurt- but for our health and well-being they have to be removed.
