Pruning the Roses (Pt 2)

Ok, and we’re back! I’m glad you made it, I’m sure you’ve been eagerly waiting to see how getting stuck with thorns and hacking off bushes relates to God. Well, I’ll tell you. But first, a recap. Last time on “Water and Oil”… Ohhhh, just scroll down to see it.

Have you ever wondered why God seems to allow bad things to happen to your life? I mean, this one life, it’s all we got on this world. And if He truly loves us, doesn’t He want us to be happy? So, why does He give us misery and pain? Would it be better if He just made us all rich, so that we can devote our free time to worshipping God and furthering his ministry, rather than having to get up at 7, 8, 9, 10, 11a just to go to work? Why do our dogs have to die? Or our parents, or even worse, our innocent little babies, who didn’t even get the same chances we have? Why did He send Hurricane Katrina? Was it really to punish the heathen city as some vocal Christian leaders have said? What about that huge earthquake in India? Well, I don’t really have any answers to all that. There is a great book about that sort of thing, “Where is God when it hurts?” by Philip Yancy.

One thing that struck me about the book is the nature of pain. People always assume that pain is bad. However, Philip showed through the first quarter of the book, that pain is actually good. It’s an early warning sign that something bad is happening to you and you should pay attention to it. Using an extreme example, he explained how leprous patients often lose their fingers and toes precisely because they don’t feel pain. So when they grab a pencil for example, they can’t tell when to stop gripping the pencil too tightly. It’s the slight pain or resistance that will tell your fingers to stop squeezing. Or if you leave your hand too close to the stove, pain in your hand sends the signal to your nervous system to jerk back your hand. In fact, that’s an example of a simple reflex. See? Now you don’t have to buy this book either! What a deal! Not only does this blog inform, but also saves you money.

Anyway, you can see that pain is actually a safety feature. Likewise, misery or hardship is also good for you. You are exactly like a rosebush. Your actions are the rose buds. One bright rose might be you helping a little old lady cross the street. Another rose might be you leading Sunday School. But just like a rosebush, you need to be pruned. And guess who’s the pruner? Yup, and unlike a human pruner, God has the perfect green thumb. He knows infinitely better which branch to cut from you, and which bough to shear. Not only that, He knows the exact time to shear. Reading up on pruning, I have learned that if you prune too early, frost may set in. Prune too late and you’ll get unwanted facial hair, or something. I don’t know, I just skimmed it. But you get my point.

Going along with the analogy, how does God “prune” you? Well, of course, there’s many ways, but one way He does this it is by forcing you to uncomfortable situations. He could literally prune your family tree, by sending some of your relatives off this wide dusty earth. Or He could prune your chances with that cute girl(/boy) sitting the next pew over. Or if He feels you’re getting a little too much pride, He could lop off some of your good fortune, whether it’s a job layoff or losing a bet with someone over a football game.

But the point is not what the exact method is, the point is what are you going to do as a result of the pruning? Will you wither away as the frost hits you, or will you bloom bigger and brighter the next summer? The choice is sorta yours. If you choose to wither, then God will simply lop off more branches and more branches until you do bloom. Taken to the extreme, he could cut the entire bush down, leaving only the root, just like He did with Job and just like gong-gong did with my rose bush gift. But learn from my example, and listen to God when He prunes you. You’ll lose less branches.

And since I didn’t use the Bible at all, I’ll leave you with these verses:

“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Pe. 1:6-7)