The Tree

 "He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful." John 15:2 (NIV)

I sat on the porch as my kids played outside. I love this time of year because you can just sit outside and enjoy the nice weather. It was funny because I thought to myself, "God, if I sit here long enough not doing anything, You'll talk to me." At that same moment, I glanced toward a tree in our front yard. Back in the winter we had decided that this tree was probably dead and rotting on the inside because it looked so bad on the outside, so we had someone come to cut it down. While the man was cutting away the dead branches and getting into the actual trunk, he noticed that it was alive. He asked us if we wanted to still cut it down or if we wanted to cut away the dead branches and see if it would bloom back out. We decided we would keep the tree and watch it over the next year or so to see what happens. This is a picture of our tree.

You can see that it’s starting to grow back out, and (to me, anyway) looks healthier than it ever has. After I glanced at this tree, I looked across the street to my neighbor's tree. She had the same thing done to hers a few years ago and this is what her tree looks like now...fully alive.

It wasn't a lesson on tree trimming that God was speaking to me. It, instead, was a lesson on our own lives. When we come to God, we are like the tree that is dying. We have sin in our life that is slowly killing us and making us hollow on the inside. People in the world look at us and think we'd be better off "cut down". But God is like the tree trimmer. He begins to cut away the dead and hollow branches...branches that He doesn't need to use in His work in us. He gets us down to only what we need to make a healthy "comeback". While it may hurt us during this trimming process, we soon become fully alive again. We begin to root ourselves in Christ and be fed by His Word. Eventually we bloom out into a healthy, happy, tree of life! Are you the dead, hollow tree slowly rotting away on the inside? Let God trim you down and restore you back to life!