Twigs and Branches

July 13, 2022

We love pecans, and eat some every day. There are about a dozen trees on our acre; in 2021 they produced enough pecans to last us about two more years! What a blessing from God!

That being said, there is something very aggravating about pecan trees. They are ‘self-pruning.’ They tend to lose a branch or two whenever strong winds blow through. Now, I don’t mind spending a few hours cleaning up the yard a couple times each year after tropical storms pass by. It’s the never-ending litter of little twigs that gets under my skin. I pick up dozens and dozens of foot-long twigs every week.

I’ve noticed that, once I pick up a wheel barrow load of pecan twigs, I start seeing smaller twigs that I passed over before. I can never get the yard perfectly clean. I’ve got to ignore the smallest stuff.

Okay, God, I know there’s a lesson here for me. I’m trying not to think about it, but you won’t let me push the thought away.

In John chapter 15, Jesus tells his disciples that God will be doing some ‘pruning’ in their lives to continually make their lives more abundant and fruitful. Of course that applies to us today, since we’re disciples if we’ve made Jesus our master. God will knock off things from our lives that we don’t need, because he wants to make us better. He doesn’t stop with branches, but prunes off twigs we don’t need, too.

I don’t always agree with God on what was a branch and what was just a twig. I’d be glad to limit the pruning to the big stuff. God wants more for me than I want for myself. It can seem harsh but what it really is…is love.