Tag Archives: trimming

Life Lessons

Reaching for the Sky!

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    As I said last week, I’ve been trimming and tying up the young rose cuttings from last year, and imagining a conversation I could have had with one of them. The particular rose in the photo had one long strong branch coming out of the main stem, reaching out to the side. It’s head wasn’t particularly strong looking and certainly wasn’t a good shape. So I picked the strong stalk up and tied it firmly  into an upright position onto the stake.

“Ouch!” exclaimed the rose, “That hurts!”

“I’m sorry about that,” I said, “But this is how I want you to grow. I want you to look up and grow into a taller plant with your head on higher things.”

The rose got a bit sulky at that and muttered, “I wanted to grow my branches out low, down to the ground because that’s how I would be if you weren’t watching me. After all, I AM a carpet rose you know!”

    I looked further along the row and saw a rose that I had trained a few years earlier. It is tall, with a bushy head  looking up to the sky, and is covered with flowers being a thing of beauty and joy to everyone who sees it.

 “Do you see that rose over there?” I asked the one I was dealing with, “That’s how you will look  too in a couple of years time. You will be able to have other flowers growing beneath your branches instead of being a tangled mess lying on the ground with other branches growing all over the place. You are a good strong plant and have great potential if you obey my pruning and staking!”

“I suppose so,” sighed the one I was dealing with, “But it’s not very nice being tied up tight like this. It hurts when you take my little side branches off too!”

“It’ all for your own good, my dear,” I said, “and you will thank me for it one day!”

   This little story has an application that we should all take to heart. It is only as we respond to the tying and staking of the Master Gardener in our life, and lift our heads to look up into His face that we will be able to reach our full potential that He plans for us. Yes, there will be experiences that we could well do without, but if we remember that He always knows what is best and can see the wider plan, we can take it all happily and rest in knowing His love for us.

Random Devotional Thoughts

Cutting Out the Deadwood.

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I’ve been trimming our hedge today, and it reminded me how we have to be trimmed by the Heavenly Gardener also. It’s hard work to do this and to get the hedge back to looking good again….no doubt it also hurts the hedge trees! Certainly trimming us of our bad habits and thoughts takes time and effort on our part and often hurts us in the process. Nor is this a one-off process…the hedge  needs to be done continually, and so it is with us.

Just as the trimming neatens and tidies up the hedge, and makes it good to look at and enhances the general garden appearance, so the trimming that God gives us does the same in our lives….in fact we are told in the Bible that  “No chastening for the present seems to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are exercised by it. So therefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed (Hebrews 12:11-13 KJV).

Not only does this pruning tidy things up, but in fruit trees, it also helps to the trees to bear fruit. In exactly the same way, we cannot bear fruit for God until we are trimmed up with all the rough branches and dead twigs in our lives cut off. This is truly just dead wood. So much that we get involved in seems good at the time, but in the end it is only dead wood, and has no fruit for the Master Gardener. This is where we have to be alert and cut out spending our time fruitlessly (in every sense of the word!)

John tells us that the only way we can bear fruit for the Lord is to abide in Him; that is, to do His will and ask Him what we should do (John 15:1-6). Unless we do this we cannot abide in Him…..there is no room for Him when our will is taking over. We must bow to His will in all that we do, so we can bear fruit for Him..

Let’s take these thoughts to heart, clean our act up and get going again!