I thought I had captured the sunshine and planted it in my garden. This spring, when gardens everywhere were filled with young plants and the promise of sweet snap peas and juicy cherry tomatoes, while nothing was blooming yet, I planted the brightest, yellowest marigolds.
I bought them in full bloom and gave them a home among my not-yet-blooming tomatoes and peas, instantly cheered by the sunshine yellow in a sea of nothing but green.
Two days later, I spied my toddler son plucking the blooms. Not one or two, but every single marigold bloom and bud from my plants was destroyed and tossed onto the ground. The seemingly senseless act of violence to my marigolds left them bare, green, flowerless – just like the rest of my garden – and stole my joy as I began to worry if my heirloom tomatoes would suffer the same fate.
Do you sometimes feel like you are suffering for no good reason?
Maybe something you did not anticipate or cause (or perhaps were intentionally and carefully avoiding) comes out of nowhere, and your struggle feels entirely fruitless.
My husband and I have been white-knuckling through a season of difficult situations, conflict in close relationships, questions about where to live, and the inescapable feeling that we are running on a hamster wheel and going nowhere.
Then our dishwasher stopped working and the dashboard on our SUV lit up with sudden alerts. Why, Lord? Now? As we are trying to untangle so many complex issues, did we really need the car and dishwasher to fail on the same day, too?
Maybe yes.
Jesus said in John 15: “I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”
Maybe our seemingly futile sufferings are actually a pruning, a chance to bear more fruit than if we just muddled along in our daily lives. I have only started scratching the surface of how difficult circumstances can stretch us to become more patient, more loving, more trusting in God. They can point out our selfishness, our comforts, our addictions, and in pruning those away improve our creativity and humility.
But take note: pruning doesn’t just mean cutting out useless branches. In pruning fruit-bearing trees, bushes, and vines, the gardener may chop healthy branches or stems that would have produced something if left on their own. It is not senseless or futile, though it might look that way in the moment. Through careful pruning, a gardener can improve the harvest by encouraging plants to put more effort into fruit production and preventing disease.
Even the good things in our lives might be pruned for our good.
“Abide in me, and I in you,” Jesus told his disciples. “As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.”
Speaking of pruning, how does my garden look today?
Far from ruining my garden, my toddler improved it. The marigold plants, stripped of all of their efforts to produce seeds the first time around, put the effort in tenfold. I have dozens more of the brightest, yellowest flowers now than I ever would have if I had been able to protect those first few buds.
I hope I will react to pruning as gracefully as they do.