I Wanna Be That Tree

Ok! Ok! Now, I know that sounded silly, but let me tell you why I say I wanna be a tree.

I was reading my Bible the other morning. I haven't read the book of Luke much in the last few years, but found myself in the 13th chapter, and I came across a parable that I don't remember reading before. Here's the parable, in modern day Shannon language. I figure you can read it for yourself, when you get the time.

So, a man owns a vineyard and in that vineyard there's this tree that hasn't been producing fruit for I think 3 years. So, the owner comes along and sees the tree not producing. He says to the worker, "Now, I've been coming here and wanting to get fruit off this tree for 3 years and it's not producing any. Just cut it down. There's no use in it being here."

The worker says, "Well, if you'll just let it alone this one more year, I'll do some work on it. I'll dig around it and put fertilizer around it. And, if it doesn't produce after I've tended to it, then we'll cut it down."

So, after reading that parable, I got to thinking about this. Maybe, God looks down from heaven one day and sees me. Maybe I'm not where I should be in my walk with Jesus, and he says to Jesus, "She's not producing any fruit. I don't see what use she is in my kingdom. Let's just get rid of her."

Then, I can hear Jesus say, "Father, let me do some work on her. Let me dig out all the bad stuff and put something around her that will help her grow."

Down on earth, after Jesus starts working on me, I am feeling bare without the ground close at my roots, and it's starting to get pretty smellyhere with all this dung around me. Now, the Lord says that fertilizer is supposed to help me, but it stinks, and I don't like it. Besides, nobody will come around me no more.

You see where I'm going with this? You know as well as I do that we must cut off the bad if we want flowers or trees to grow, but yet, we don't want God to prune us. Do we?

I remember several years ago, my husband said to me, "I'm going to get a chain saw and cut off the bad parts of that tree out there."

We have a pink dogwood in our back yard, and that year it had grown so much that it was in the power lines. I of course, thought to myself, "Oh dear, I'm not so sure about this."

Well, one day in March I came home and he had taken a chain saw to my tree, and everybody, mostly my family kept saying how awful it looked. :) But, do you know what? It bloomed so very pretty that year, and everybody was talking about it. They loved the way it looked and were shocked when I told them what he'd done.

Here's part of a little song we learned at church camp.

"He's the peach of a Savior, He's the apple of my eye. He prunes all my branches when my branches get to high. He bares fruit in season and His love will never die. So, that's why I'm bananas for the Lord."

So, I've been meditating on that parable, here lately. I've been thinking about that tree, and decided that I want God to use me, to fix me, to help me grow. And, the only way He will do that, is if I be that tree.