Green Thumbs

It's spring. Well actually it is still winter but with 70 degrees outside I can have my fantasy. My mom is probably spending the whole day outside pruning her trees and flowers. She has a bright green thumb...mine is brown so I really am amazed at what she can do with plants. She has been known to stop along a roadside in Colorado, dig up several baby Aspen trees, plant them in her yard in Oklahoma and have them survive Oklahoma weather! At one point she had a small grove of Aspen in her front yard that turned a beautiful yellow in the fall. She said my dad wanted a little bit of Colorado at home so she planted Aspen. Anyone who knows anything about plants knows that this is almost impossible to do. Aspen in Oklahoma. It's like snowballs in a rainforest...it could happen but not likely.

But back to the pruning. Mom prunes dead branches off all her plants. The dead can cause disease, she told me. But she also prunes live branches. This enhances the look of some plants and the fruit of others. Looking back on her canning lists she knows her stuff. And one look at her yard in spring, summer or fall will convince you to listen if you want to grow plants. But right now it all looks hopeless. The winter has not been kind to things outdoors. The ice storm was beautiful, in a way. The light playing off the ice could not be described adequately! But the damage left was awful. Large trees split down the middle. Smaller trees bent to the ground, never to stand straight again. Azaleas with holes where, in years past, there was an abundance of flowers. Mom has her work cut out (literally) for her. She morns what is lost knowing it will never be the same again in her lifetime. But in the middle of the loss, she will pick up her tools and go to work to make the destruction beautiful and productive once again.

I feel pruned. Yesterday left me wondering if I will ever get all the dead stuff off and really be productive for God. I am hoping to have a wonderful time helping and encouraging people but in past experience I know the challenge will be great. (I will be the object of 99 percent of the Jerks in our area :0) My daughter reminded me of a scripture we both struggle with in 2nd Corinthians 10:5...taking every thought captive and making it obedient to Christ. Pruning off the thought process so that Christ's thoughts can become mine...oh that it were easy! But it is a battle against the storm of negative self talk and negative outside influence...and like the ice storm it leaves me thinking that the damage is too great to even try to clear out and clean up, much less that anything positive could come of it. But in the middle of it all, God throws another scripture out...that He is the vinedresser and pruner (John 15) and that any branch that does not bear fruit he prunes away and He repeatedly prunes every branch that continues to bear fruit to make it bear more and richer and more excellent fruit. So I guess in my mental pruning I am pruned if I do think Christ-like thoughts and I am pruned if I don't. But it is God doing the work...not me! Taking out the negative and causing the positive to grow even more positive. All I do is abide and live in the Vine, Jesus.

My mom doesn't label her fruit trees. She knows what they are by the fruit they produce. They just stand there, through the storms, letting her lop off the bad and sometimes the good, and allow her to even dump manure on them occasionally. And at the right time the flowers and fruit appear. Oh that I can abide and stand in Jesus, Messiah, trusting the Father to produce the crop that He already is planning in me at just the right time. All I can say is thank you to the wise pruner who has the greenest thumb of all!