Yesterday I volunteered to prune our landscape garden...not exactly sure why I signed up for such a task to tell the truth. At first, I was quite miserable as I was trying to cut, snip, or pull out any dead or unwanted weeds in the garden. The fire ants were out in full force and it seemed each stem I touched had a thorn on it. After a while though I found my rhythm and actually began to enjoy the whole pruning process. (Good thing, because I still had two hours to spend in the garden!)

While I was out there, I began to understand what Christ said in John 15 a little more:

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. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

Each bush or flower that was in the garden needed pruning it seemed. They would either have dead limbs that needed cutting off or weeds invading its space that need pulling out. In another case, some mint had grown over the path a little bit and needed to be trimmed back a few inches. As branches in Christ, the true vine, we need the parts of us that have died or wasted away to be cut off of us so we can experience new growth. Sometimes we've been overcome by a vine that isn't of Christ, so we need to be freed from it.

Though the process was tedious, I found myself enjoying the last parts of pruning. I liked shaping the bushes and seeing a prettier finished product.

I couldn't help but imagine God smiling as he cuts away our dead parts and makes us more beautiful for the vine of Christ.