Need rejuvenation?

Yesterday I was outside enjoying the early spring season and was trimming overgrown "burning bushes" (you know, those bushes that get all red in the Fall). I had already cut back one of the bushes last year, but decided that it needed even further pruning because some of the canes I had left looked too long and straggly. So I went ahead and cut those straggly ones out. What was left was a smaller bush - probably a quarter to a third of the size it was last year before I started the process - but much more compact and well-shaped. The next two bushes I tackled were a little different story. Because they were close to the house they had been repeatedly trimmed back so that even though they were getting some age on them they were not that big in size. But the way you could tell they were older bushes was the fact that they had some pretty thick canes (stems), some of which had actually died. I had the choice of contining to do what had been done previously - reducing the size of the bush by 10 or 12 inches - or do a more dramatic form of pruning called "rejuvenation pruning". This is a very severe form of pruning, usually done on older bushes, where you cut the entire bush all the way down to within inches of the ground. With the first bush there were enough younger canes that I chose to leave them and just cut out the older, thicker ones. With the next two bushes there were virtually no younger canes (the bushes were more compact and created too dense of shade to encourage new shoots), so when I was done cutting out the old canes it looked like there was nothing left! I say "looked like" because in actuality there were a few little shoots that had been trying to make a go at it but, because lack of sunlight, were not doing too well. Those weak, little shoots reassured me that indeed there would be new growth to replace the old. But even without such reassurance an experienced gardener wouldn't even think twice about doing this kind of severe pruning. As long as one knows the kind of bush you're dealing with - that it can indeed tolerate this kind of pruning - it's virtually impossible to kill it. It'll keep coming back, stronger than ever!



Needless to say, I was seeing some cool spiritual analogies while engaged in this process. To the unlearned or uninitiated, rejuvenation pruning looks way out of line. It doesn't appear to make sense to "butcher" a bush like that - it looks so ugly! But if you have ever driven through orchards or vineyards in the winter or after the trees and vines have been pruned and prepared for the coming season, those trees and vines don't look aesthetically pleasing. They've been severely pruned for one purpose and one purpose alone - to bear fruit. If you want a tree to be "pleasant to the eye", then you plant what would be termed a shade tree, and prune accordingly (to look more like an umbrella). But if you want a fruit tree to bear strong, healthy fruit, you have to open the middle of the tree up to get sunlight, which is what fruit needs to ripen and develop properly. The result is a mishapen, twisted looking tree, but one that can bear large, well-ripened fruit. Ornamental bushes like the burning bush don't bear fruit but they will, if left unattended, get overgrown with thick, woody canes that eventually die and become deadwood. These older canes make it difficult for the younger ones to come up and replace the older ones, so thinning them out from time to time, or doing rejuvenation pruning, gives the bush a new lease on life and prolongs the life of the bush.

I will leave to your own fertile imagination the lessons that can be gleaned from this, God's "second book".


"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener . . . you are the branches . . ."
(John 15:1-8)


"No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12:11)