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“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.

Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; 

and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. 

 

You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.

Remain in Me, and I in you.

Just as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself but must remain in the vine, 

so neither can you unless you remain in Me.”

~ John 15:1-5

 

Good morning dear Sister!

Oh happy day! The flowers are in full bloom and the air is sweet with their perfume! I love every season, but Spring is such a joyful time! I love watching the trees begin to wake up and become more green by the day!

The tree I love watching the most sits in our front yard in plain view of our living room windows (where my favorite sunrise chair is situated). It is a tamarack; a pine tree that loses its needles in the Fall with fresh ones to appear in the Spring! 

The tree is quite large and funny looking; the top must have been cut off at one time, so it is no longer pointy like a pine, and huge branches have been cut off either at the property line or those growing too close to our house. The remaining branches mostly point northeast or southwest. There have been a lot of perfectly good branches cut off and taken away all because they grew in the wrong direction. I guess that makes me feel kind of sorry for it.

We had a professional come to prune it once. It was an expensive ordeal, so eventually, my beloved decided to take to pruning it himself; which became QUITE the ordeal. Ted and I are coming up on forty years of a harmonious, fruitful and loving marriage, but for at least twenty-five of them, I have ‘struggled’ with the idea of pruning that tree. 

Knowing how difficult it is for me, and that I’m probably going to give him a really hard time, he usually waits until I’m not home to do what must be done. I’m sorry to say that I do not react well, but at least I don’t vent my rage at him. Do I get points for that?

One legendary fit saw me stomp outside, savagely yanking weeds until my anger was spent. That time, I cleared a 5’ x 250’ border along a fence, by hand, by myself, until I was finally too exhausted to be angry. Of course, no one wanted to get near me!

This time, Ted didn’t wait for me to leave home, but he alerted me of his decision to prune that day. I listened to his reasonable and valid plans. I’m honestly trying to grow in this, so I offered only weak resistance. But I could feel my heart beginning to pound and tears welling up in my eyes. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t even look at him! 

As I left the room I thought to myself, “this is really weird, what is going on?” I tried to talk sense to myself. “It’s only a tree”, I thought, “it has no eternal value.” Also, I know that if God wanted to, He could cause it to wither and die any moment. That led me to think, what does God want? Why am I so afraid of pruning?

I began to pray about it (as Ted was happily sawing away), and God graciously gave me insight! Just because Ted is taking away what I perceive to be a perfectly placed branch does NOT mean that God is going to take me away if I’m not flourishing in my place or growing in a direction I should not go.

In fact, the term ‘take away’ in this pruning verse is from the Greek word ‘airo’, which translates to ‘lift up’! It was a practice among the ancient vinedressers that if a branch was too close to the ground, they would lift it up in order for it to get better sunshine so that it would begin bearing fruit. Isn’t that a beautiful picture of a careful and loving gardener?

When we are grafted into the True Vine (Jesus), the Vinedresser (God) is not going to throw us away, but He has lifted us out of darkness and into His glorious sunshine to bear beautiful fruit to His glory! 

Jesus assures us that the branches (us) attached to the vine (Him) are already made clean! We are forgiven, healed and delivered by His word of truth!

Because of Him, we remain attached to the Vine, receiving spiritual nourishment to grow and bear Godly fruit, for it is not possible to bear fruit pleasing to God in our own strength. As long as we remain in Him, we will never grow into the wrong place.

Are you worried about the Lord pruning you or even ‘taking you away’? Do not lose heart, dear sister, if you remain in the True Vine, the Master Vinedresser will tenderly lift you up and shape you into exactly the fruit bearing branch He intends you to be, in the image of His own Son! His Word is life and light and His promises are true! Remain in Him and He will remain in you!

Praise God!

With love, your sister, Celeste