Vines and Pruning

A young tree is simple. A slender trunk. Maybe one or two branches.

After years of growth, and ignorant neglect, the tree is much different. It will be composed of a tangle of convoluted branches winding in and out of each other. Some may even have died.

Lives are like that. When we’re young, they seem simple. Uncomplicated.

As the years go by, we become entangled with worries and anxieties, ambitions and goals, sorrows and failures. It’s hard to get perspective. Difficult to see even where the trunk is.

Jesus told Martha, when she complained that sister Mary was just sitting there listening to him rather than helping in the kitchen, that ‘only one thing is necessary, and Mary has chosen the best thing’.

In life we need to maintain focus on the one thing that is necessary, and not become entangled with all the rest. 

Jesus also said that he is the vine and we are the branches, and that the Father in heaven is the gardener who prunes off those branches which are useless.

How many useless branches are entangling me today, Lord? Come and prune those which are unnecessary and just clogging my understanding and obscuring my vision.