Pruning Trees and God's Plan for Us

When I was growing up, my parents built a home on a two acre piece of land in southeastern Pennsylvania.  Part of the lot was heavily wooded, with lots of beautiful trees.  For the first few years, there was a lot of work to be done with the cultivation of the trees.  Many of the trees were dying because their own branches and vines were inhibiting the trees' growth.  I was taught how to prune the trees.  I learned that pruning trees was all about figuring out the parts of the tree that were killing the tree, and removing those parts.

Every day after school, I picked up an axe and went to work.  To the casual observer who didn't know what was going on, it would have appeared that my agenda was to destroy the tree.  I was, after all, holding an axe, and hacking away at the tree.

What I was doing was the opposite of destroying the tree.  I was giving new life to the tree.  I was saving the tree.  In order to save the tree, I had to remove the parts of the tree that were destroying it.

John the Baptist uses the imagery of pruning to describe the nature of repentance.  God's agenda in us and in our world is not to destroy us and bring destruction to the world.  That is, unfortunately, often our own agenda for ourselves.  God's agenda is to bring us new life and to bring about a new creation.  In order for us to become a new creation, there are parts of our behavior and our nature that have to die.  We must allow God to enter into our souls and into our world so that we can find new life.