What a great time to be traveling out East! It's cherry blossom time. I've just been where those pink beauties are popping out everywhere. One of the gals on the Weather Channel was broadcasting from Washington, DC. with a backdrop of exploding cherry blossoms.
The Park Ranger she interviewed provided some information that surprised the reporter and made me slightly smarter. He said those springtime wonders have a normal life span of about 60 years. But because the Park Service regularly prunes them, they can keep beautifying their world for up to a hundred years. Of course, if I'm a cherry blossom tree, I'm not thinking happy thoughts as someone's chopping off my branches - "This guy's killin' me!" No, silly tree, he's making you more fruitful for a lot longer.
I can almost imagine me having a conversation with God like that. Because there are those painful times when I don't especially like the cuts and wounds. Bad news, bad treatment, bad health, bad finances, bad people, bad feelings. It turns out, though, that they may not really be bad. No, Ron, He's making you more fruitful for a lot longer.
Because God is the Master Horticulturist. And He prunes what He loves. Jesus said so. "I am the true vine, and My Father is the gardener...Every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful" (John 15:2). Life's cuts aren't to hurt me but to make me more valuable to God and other people than ever before.
It's when life gets harder that I ask life-changing questions that I would never ask otherwise. I find myself asking God, "Is there something I need to change, Lord?" Somehow my vision improves when I'm hurting. I see things I couldn't see when life was rosy. I need mid-course corrections which are revealed by the shock waves of struggle. I need to get my hands off the steering wheel and let God drive again - and sometimes it takes a close call or a crash to show me that. And whatever I have to give to hurting people around me grew out of the times when God used suffering to show me how to care.
Maybe realizing God's loving purposes can help me get to that peaceful plateau Paul reached when he said: "I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:10).
Calling all cherry blossom trees - and people like me. The pruning knife is your friend. The Gardener knows what He's doing. And what you can become.