Thoughts: Hannah's Blog

Pruning is an important process in gardening. Any gardener would tell you that. I am not good at gardening, most of the plants that I buy, end up dying. So that’s why I enlisted the help of a gardener and asked him to give me some plants for a small balcony garden.

I love jasmine flowers so I had one plant and he potted it in the largest pot available with me. He used to visit once in a while to inspect the plants. He used to dig a bit, remove some dead leaves or branches, cut some plants here and there, then used to add some manure and tell me if I had been over-watering or under-watering my plants.

Seeing my interest in the jasmine plant, he explained that some time between mid January and mid February, if we pluck out all the leaves in the jasmine plant, it would grow more shoots and give out more flowers. Saying so, he pruned the plant (pulled out all the leaves) and left. It took some 2 weeks to a month to give out new shoots and each shoot had a bunch of buds – some had 3, some 5, some 7 and some 9 or even higher! We collected so many flowers each day from that single plant, that my mom used to tie it up in a strand and give it to me to keep it in my hair. It has such a sweet smell!

This is the definition of Pruning, I got from a website:

“Pruning is when you selectively remove branches from a tree. The goal is to remove unwanted branches, improve the tree’s structure, and direct new, healthy growth.”

God does the same with us. He prunes us so we’d grow better. The process maybe painful at times, we may not know or understand why things happen,  why some people leave, why we have to move to a different job or a different city, why some things just didn’t work out, why the difficult situation: In the midst of it all, trust the Gardener. He knows what is best for our lives and he has an ultimate plan and a purpose for what he is allowing in our lives.  Though things may seem negative right now, don’t loose hope. He is able to bring something positive and beautiful out of this pruning. His plans are to grow you – bloom where you are planted.

For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. – Jeremiah 29:11 NLT