It’s time to follow up on the status of my prayer plant that I wrote about a couple weeks ago (full post here):
New leaves are unfurling and it’s happy. All because I took a pair of scissors and did some pruning, whacked it down to the bottom and let it begin again.
And it’s not the only plant around my house that is thriving because of pruning.
This is our rose, which had a maple tree growing out of the middle of it, as well as a number of dead branches. Once the tree was removed and the dead branches were pruned off, it looked a lot better.
It seems the lesson to be learned from both of these plants is a biblical one:
I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He 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.
~John 15:1-2 NIV
Seasons of pruning are not a cakewalk. It’s not enjoyable to watch things fall away, especially if you wouldn’t choose to have them leave your life. Yet what if the outcome is that you become more fruitful, more productive, and more alive? What then? Would you better endure the season of pruning?
Here’s another plant that lives in my house, a baby rubberplant:
I recently relocated this plant to a new pot with fresh soil, because it had outgrown its previous accommodations. There was a period of transplant shock, where no change was evident. However, if you look closely, there are a couple new leaves growing and the rest of the foliage is more green than it was before. It was a shock to the system to leave its root-bound pot, where it had no more room to expand, but after it adjusted to the new pot and fresh dirt, it decided life wasn’t so bad after all.
Like pruning, being uprooted and planted somewhere else can be a shock for us. What makes uprooting harder is that we aren’t guaranteed to be planted immediately after. Sometimes there is a period of waiting, of healing, before we are ready to be planted in a new location. This can feel disorienting and uncomfortable, but once that shock wears off, we realize the new pot isn’t so bad.
I’ve written before that we aren’t so very different from houseplants (you can read that post here). There’s a reason that many of Jesus’s parables were related to agriculture. The people back then understood those parallels, and while many of us don’t live an agricultural life now, we still understand because it’s rooted in us. In school, we learn about seeds and the growth cycle of plants. Lots of us have houseplants. Our DNA down deep craves proximity to growing things… perhaps because the first man and woman were placed in a Garden at the beginning? Part of our base coding yearns to return to the Garden, where things were perfect and good before the Fall.
At the end of the day, God desires that we are healthy and growing. In order to do that, He is willing to cause discomfort by pruning away things that are no longer serving us, or even totally uproot us from something because it’s actually too small to hold us well. The plant can’t see that the pot is too small for it; only from the outside can the gardener see the problem. Likewise, it’s not always easy for us to recognize that we have outgrown our current container. The uprooting can come as a shock, but later we will understand when we have been placed somewhere else that gives our roots room to grow down, spread out, and become stronger.
Pruning and re-potting are not a punishment. They feel that way in the moment, but they are truly for our good, just like a real plant. If you stay in a container that is too small, your roots can rot and die, causing damage and even death for the whole plant. That is not the life the Master Gardener desires for any of His children. He desires that we have abundant life (John 10:10). This might mean we experience discomfort as He tends to us, but at the end we will flourish even more.
I want to be a flourishing tree, a “planting of the LORD for the display of His splendor” (Isaiah 61:3). I trust the One who is tending to me and guiding my journey because He is good. (For more on the Master Gardener, read John 15 in full.)
Blessings,
~Lynne
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