“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, as I also 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.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”
Several years ago, my wife received a small Yellow Texas rose bush. I had never tended a rose bush and knew nothing of how to care for it. Luckily it knew what to do and thrived in its little pot in the backyard where I left it - the little bush bloomed its heart out all summer, blessing us with vibrant flowers of varying shades of yellow. At the end of summer I was thankful for the beauty the small bush provided, but assumed it would die in the winter and that would be the end of our Yellow Texas rose.
But, maybe by the shear coincidence that we live in Texas, the bush came back to life the very next spring: a wee bit bigger and just as prolific in its flower show. So at the end of the summer I decided to make the bush a permanent member of our backyard by removing her from her disposable black pot in which she was delivered and planted her prominently in a section I hoped she would enjoy. Honestly, I believed that the transplant would shock her system and that the new location would not provide the appropriate amount of sun and shade and that I was sentencing her to a withering scorched death. But again, to my delight, the Yellow Texas rose bush flourished in her new home, growing a bit larger and bearing an even more prolific amount of flowers.
She had had suffered through my bumblings as a gardener, and so I felt it my duty to study up on how to care for a rose bush. I was was agast when I read over and over again that to best tend a rose bush one should trim it back to next to nothing at the end of the growing season. Somehow my little Yellow Texas rose had done just fine without the drastic surgery encouraged by the literature I was finding, but there was this constant nagging in the back of my mind that maybe she would thrive even better if I were to prune her back as was suggested by the myriad master gardeners. So with utter confidence that I was murdering my sweet Yellow Texas rose, in the cool of October I cut her back to nothing but five spindly twigs protruding from the earth - nude of any leaves or branches.
All winter long I looked at my Yellow Texas rose bush and was ashamed of what I had done - I chastised myself for taking on faith the advice of these unknown so-called experts. Watching the Charlie Brown Christmas special that year, I was condemned that Charlie Brown's christmas tree was a thriving specimen of life compared to the butchered Yellow Texas rose bush that sat silently in my backyard. It was in early spring, however, that my self abuse was proved for not. For not only did my little Yellow Texas rose bush begin to push forth vibrant green buds at the first sign of warming weather, but by late May she was at least three times larger than she had been the year before! Throughout the summer she produced flowers of every shade of yellow imaginable and more! What an incredible transformation my little Yellow Texas rose went through - in fact she was no longer little, but truly a woman among rose bushes. In fact, she has established herself as queen of the backyard (at least in my mind).
So now, as August is coming to a close and summer along with it, I know that in the not too distant future the shears will come out and my Yellow Texas Queen will undergo a severe haircut, but this year I will take my cue from her and I will not flinch an inch as I clip her bare of all her garments leaving her nude and exposed.
I am excited about what God is doing in my life and the community of friends and family He has gathered around me. I am faithful that He is a good vine dresser and that His pruning is always for our good; I am also faithful that I, like the literal vine, will grow bolder in my faith and will not flinch when the good vine dresser's shears are used to trim me back. I will not be condemned when the shears come to do their work: that the vine needs to be pruned is not a fault of the vine but simply a reality of healthy growth!
