PRUNING WITH A PURPOSE
I have a lilac tree in my back yard – beautiful white flowers. Well I decided it needed a little bit of pruning, so I got out some cutters and – well, the truth is I hacked it up. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but it had overgrown my clothes-line and needed to be cut back, and now it looks a little bit funny. Not too bad, but one look and you know it wasn’t pruned by someone who knows what they are doing.
And that’s why the pruning Jesus is talks about isn’t a scary thing. The gardener knows what He is doing. The pruning might still cause us some pain – He might cut off a particular part that we are fond of, a habit we enjoy, something we are proud of. It might be a part of our lives that we
...