Too Many Options [Lessons on Pruning]

I tell you, sometimes it doesn’t take an expert... 

I hadn’t the foggiest clue how to make it right, but I certainly knew something was wrong.

This chaos of twigs and buds, of bark and branches. 

I stop on my tour through the arbor— this little haven brother and I baby like a pet. He’s tending to the turf today, I’ll address the apples. 

Here we are, spring upon us, leaving again in a day, and these trees each look like a teenage boy with a bed-head. Something needed to be done yesterday, by someone. And if that someone isn’t me, it won’t be anybody. 

So I watch a string of pruning tutorials on YouTube over lunch break. 

Afterwards, armed with clippers, I chop into the fray until trees never before trimmed look something like the ones in the tutorial. I work down the row, and slowly the motley crew starts looking almost like a brotherhood. And something like trees again. (Instead of bushes.) 

Then down the mulched trail I bungle, bundling branches until I’ve got almost all my arms can handle. From 8 little trees. 

When I toss them down on the little burn pile, I pause to finger fuzzy little bud starts, built last year. And suddenly, it strikes me. 

These branches I just lopped, they were viable, every one of them. Each would have had leaves and flowers this year, maybe even fruit. In fact, there was nothing in the world wrong with them, just… there were too many. Too many viable options.

So, once a year we go through and observe, reassess, mark the best, and get rid of the rest. Not the dead rest, the promising rest… 

That’s how we make the best stronger. 

I wonder would could be, if once in a while I set out to have God do the same for me?