Over the last several years, I have been honing in my gardening skills. I grew up on a farm, but we really didn’t spend much time on yard work. Although I am a far cry from having a green thumb, my skills have slowly improved. This year we decided to add some fruit trees to our yard. We chose to start out with 2 apple trees of different varieties and 1 peach tree. We opted to spend a little extra money to get a some trees that were a little bigger, just to give them a better chance to survive in our windy, often dry, climate.

When we planted the trees over spring break, I surprised my oldest daughter when I told her to pull all the flowers off the peach tree. When we bought it she was so excited to see pretty little flowers all over the branches. I explained to her that even though this tree is a fruit tree, we need to not allow it to make any fruit yet because the tree needed to build a good set of roots first. She was a bit disappointed and because of the fact she is only 6 years old, didn’t fully understand. She finally just had to take my word for it. Later that evening it hit be that I am exactly like my daughter. It seems like no matter what I am doing in my life, I want to see the fruit immediately. Sadly, that is not how things work in God’s economy.

If you look all throughout scripture, there are so many parables, stories, and references to agriculturally related things.  Jesus himself talked about how we are pruned in order to bear more fruit. “I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.” John 15:1-4 NLT

It is counterintuitive to me to actually take branches that can produce fruit away in order to produce more fruit. It seems like the more branches you have that could bear fruit, the better. But, that is not the way it works. Not in nature, and not in our own lives. In nature, too many fruit-bearing branches stunts the plant. It takes a lot of effort to produce fruit. If a plant has too many branches allowed to produce, the fruit will be smaller and not as high quality. In our lives, if we are trying to do too many things, all of those things will suffer. I know in my own life, if I have too many irons in the fire, nothing gets done well.

My husband and I have made the conscience decision in our own lives to “prune” and try to only keep the best fruit-bearing branches. We are both involved in public schools. He is a principal and I am a teacher, both in different schools. That keeps us fairly busy, especially during the spring semester. Because of that, we have chosen to be guarded about our schedule. We go against the grain a little and don’t run our kids to every sporting event, community event, or other activity. We also choose to not over-volunteer or jump into too many groups. Although we do find ourselves overly exhausted from time to time, especially with 3 kids age 6 and under and jobs that are sometimes fairly stressful, we are home most nights and most weekends. During seasons where we haven’t been as guarded, I often found myself being so exhausted that I neglected reading my Bible and didn’t give my girls the focus they need at this stage of life. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still don’t have this balance figured out. However, I know that when I am focused on a few branches bearing fruit in my life, rather than too many branches trying to make tons of fruit, I am a lot more successful. Maybe we as a society need to take some advice from Jesus and cut off some of the anemic branches we are forcing to bear fruit, in order to allow the healthy ones to produce a real harvest.