Blooming Beautiful
A broom bush gushes out at the end of our driveway. Its
flowers, a neon yellow, proliferate in a glorious glow.
It’s become a challenge to see up the road without creeping
halfway into it, but the bush’s splendour makes us hesitate to prune it. It’s
becoming a hazard.
We recently had trees pruned which were growing perilously
close to overhead electric wires, threatening to break them in a windstorm. The
pruners came late and had to remove many branches from the lilac which should
be in full bloom now. Instead we are left with a few stragglers and a bunch of
branches with blunt cuts.
Had we pruned the lilac and the broom earlier, they would
have had time to form new buds and might have been lush and beautiful ... and
safe.
Someone dear to me needs to move into a sort of sheltered
accommodation, and she desperately wants to remain at home instead. But it
strikes me that we can go now while she is still able to participate in some
activities and bloom in a new situation, or we can wait until the danger is
such that we need to prune off the blossom of her spirit, which at her age may
not easily return and if it does, it may take some time.
The prophet Isaiah wrote a promise that ‘God will keep in
perfect peace the person whose mind is focused on him’. We don’t enjoy seasons
of pruning. Most of us resist change. I know I do. We are more content to look
back at the blossom of former times than to look forward anticipating the
blossom to come.
Jesus promised to be with us always, to the end of the world,
and certainly into a new residential situation. I for one am hanging on to that
promise and looking forward to what he is going to do in this new season. I am
sure there will be blossom and with it, fruit.
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