The True Vine, Part 2

We grow raspberry vines and blueberry bushes, so we have learned a few things about pruning. Actually, I have learned a few things about pruning. Glen seems to just naturally know how to prune shrubs and bushes so that they grow well. We had to do a little research to grow raspberries. Each year, raspberries grow on the vines that grew the previous year. To keep the plants healthy, it is best to remove all the branches once they have borne fruit. So, each spring, the plant is doing two important things: it is growing fruit on the branches it grew last year; and it is growing new vines to bear next year's fruit

Glen prunes the blueberry bushes. He wants them to grow thick and not to tall so they will produce a lot of fruit (and so we can reach the berries:0). It reminds me of the words we used to sing at AWANA, "He prunes back the branches when the branches get too high."

Andrew Murray has this to say about pruning in The True Vine:

Consider a moment what this pruning or cleansing is. It is not the removal of weeds or thorns or anything from outside that may hinder the growth. No, it is the cutting off of the long shoots of the previous year, the removal of something that comes from within, that has been produced by the life of the vine itself. It is the removal of something that is a proof of the vigor of life. The more vigorous the growth has been, the greater the need for pruning. It is the honest, healthy wood of the vine that has to be cut away. And why? Because it would consume too much of the sap to fill all the long shoots of last year's growth: The sap must be saved up and used for fruit alone. . .

What a solemn, precious lesson! It is not to sin only that the cleansing of he Husbandman here refers. It is to our own religious activity, as it is developed in he very act of bearing fruit. It is this that must be cut down and cleansed away. We must, in working for God, use our natural gifts of wisdom, or eloquence, or influence, or zeal. And yet they are ever in danger of being unduly developed, and then trusted in. And so, after each season of ourselves, to the consciousness of the helplessness and the danger of all that is of man, to feel that we are nothing. All that is to be left of us is just enough to receive the power of the life-giving sap of the Holy Spirit.

What is of man must be reduced to its very lowest measure. All that is inconsistent with entire devotion to Christ's service must be removed. . . This is the true circumcision of the heart, the circumcision of Christ. This is the true crucifixion with Christ, bearing about the dying of the lord Jesus in the body. (1)

1 The Ture Vine, by Andrew Murray, published by Moody Press, Chicago, 1997, pages 27-28

What a comfort these words are to me! The raspberry bush has done just what it was designed to do in growing vines and bearing fruit. And yet, the raspberry bush is healthiest when the old growth is cut off after it has borne fruit.

Dear friend, be comforted. As Murray points out, the Husbandman prunes so that the vine may bear much fruit. The Husbandman tenderly and gently cuts off the old growth so that the plant may be healthy and produce much fruit. Be encouraged in the Father's tender love and care for you.