Pruning Day

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” - Mark 12:30-31 NIV

I was doing one of my favorite gardening tasks the other day: pruning tomatoes. Even though tomato plants may look like a jungle sometimes, they actually have a very specific structure. When pruning them, I look to remove “sucker” shoots, which sprout in the elbow of a branch and stalk of the plant. If left unattended, a sucker shoot will grow into a whole separate stalk, sometimes bigger than the original plant. You might think this would be a good thing – if the plant doubles in size, won’t it be able to produce more fruit?

What actually happens is that suckers steal energy from the main tomato plant, which result in smaller tomatoes and a less successful plant that is focused on growing more greenery, not fruit. While I pruned, I was thinking how I too could use some pruning. I get easily excited about new things, and send out enthusiastic suckers toward exterior goals like money, new hobbies, or worldly success, which distract me from my main life purpose. “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” When we “prune” our lives, choosing to drop hobbies, bad habits, or stresses that distance us from God, we will see rewards in the form of larger fruit for His kingdom and more energy to pursue the true passions that He has given us.