Roses and Stumps

John 15:1-11

1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.2He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.3You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.4Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.6If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.7If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.8This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.10If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

My son loves to go outside and smell the roses.  There are several rose bushes in our yard, after all, our dwelling has a name: 'The Rose Cottage' .  Well this morning, we stepped outside and George asked me, "Mom, where are the roses? I want to 'mell the roses!".  The fact that I did not even notice that they had all been chopped down is surely worthy of exploration in another post.  For whatever reason, I did not feel up to an explanation as to why we humans chop down the beautiful flowers and leave them looking so stumpy.  I mean, I  get it…. I  understand that if the roses were not pruned, they would not produce pretty roses next season.  I have experienced over 30 years of the change in season.  I have practiced this technique myself and have seen that it works.  If you don't "dead head" your pansies, they just get leggy and gross.  If you continuously pop the heads off the dying ones, the bush gets more and more blooms, and even the shape of the plant as a whole benefits.  But geesh, how do you explain this to a three year old? I am not sure what I told him to pacify him but I am sure that it was not the best explanation.  He just asks SO MANY questions and it was morning, and y'all, I have to pace myself!  He was really upset by the stumps you see above and every time we leave the house we go through this over and over.   There have even been tears. 

This morning, I finally opened a devotion book given to me by my grandmother for Christmas (Thanks Marty!) and the very first entry was the above verse.   That's Jesus who speaks about the vines and the branches and about gardens and how to keep your plants fruitful.  That's Jesus- who most likely felt the same way as my son when he first saw a pruned rose bush (or some other Middle Eastern version).  I imagine He felt the pain of the loss of such beauty.  The difference is that he took this and (I would like to think) immediately made a mental note : "This is what God does.  Takes away the dead part of our human selves, the part with no life, the part that does not produce good beautiful things.  Only then can the person have room for correct teaching,  which produces new growth and eventually something beautiful emerges to take the place of the dead, yucky part that all women and men carry around.  Someday I am going to have to explain that to the human race and I want to use rose bushes (or the like) as my example, It's perfect!"

I am so thankful that God was here on earth.  How else could he explain these really hard concepts to us? How else could we children understand.  Like me, the parent who knows why the roses had to be pruned but couldn't find the words for my child, God had to find a way to explain the mysteries of the universe to us.  He found a way to explain. He chose Jesus to come and help us and walk us through the hard, ugly, otherwise inexplainable things of life.  I am so thankful he did.  So take advantage of this gift of knowledge.  Listen to Jesus, remain in His love and you will find joy.  I would look for it soon after something has been "pruned" from your life.  Joy and beauty grow after the ugly and unfruitful have been removed.  

"I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete."