Good morning…
Okay. So our front hedges have been growing way out of control, hiding the bottom half of our window and inching up toward the tippy top. We have lived in this house for about six or seven years, so the seven year itch was creeping up on our bushes. Small periodic hair cuts had become useless. Drastic measures were needed to cut back the overgrowth.
So last Saturday, my special friend who is a master gardener came to our home with tools in hand and tons of wisdom in her mind. She graciously gave my husband and me a tutorial on “restoration pruning.” It seems like a bit of an oxymoron to me – “restoration” and “pruning” feels like “peacefully invite new growth” and “severely sever what is naturally growing.”
She taught us the basics of pruning and cut off the first branches to give us a visual guide for our day of hard work. Then she and I went on a ninety minute walk and talk, discussing back and forth all that God is simultaneously cutting back and gradually growing within each of us. When we walked back up our driveway, our bushes looked horrible, uncomfortably uneven, a definite work in progress.
After cooking myself a yummy omelet to go with my coffee, I too donned my work clothes and dove into the bushes. When we emerged four hours later, sweaty, tired, body aching, we stood back and took in this shocking sight.
Wow. The before and the after looked night and day. God’s light reflected through the exposed window in brand new ways. God’s breeze blew through the naked branches in places never before touched. God’s new growth had a starting place as the wild growth was cleared away. What will grow? When will it grow? How will it look when green growth grows back? We have no idea. We will wait, wonder, and watch restoration appear on our branches in God’s time, in God’s way.
Are you thinking what I am thinking? The photos of before and after feel symbolically perfect as we come up to the first anniversary of “shelter-in-place.” I don’t know about you, but I know for myself my life before COVID was overgrown with my natural tendencies toward “more, more, more.” More activities. More commitments. More mindless “have to’s.” I would say, most of us feel a sense of being pruned back to our bare selves right now.
Restoration will gradually grow on our severed branches. How? When? What will newness look like? We really have no idea. As we are cut back from our own agendas, our own time frames, our own sense of exactly how things “should” be, what grows on the branch of our everyday lives is trust in God, hope for abundance, and the love of God growing up from our roots.
When we get dependent upon other gods – our personal comfort, our praiseworthy achievements, our human love relationships – we naturally pile on more, more, more, and overtime we become overgrown with worldly commitments …completely out of touch with the source of life, Christ, who puts us together in one piece, whose very breath and blood flow through us. He is the Head and we are the body. We can grow up healthy in God only as he nourishes us (Colossians 2:19, MSG).
As life cuts us back to Christ alone, collectively we are notice, “We are all of one piece in God.” Christ’s very breath and blood flow through us every day. With Christ as the Head, we are held together as the body. When we emerge from this year of severe pruning, may we feel genuine restoration as we gradually grow up healthy in God, only as the living Christ nourishes us.
…Sue…
