who does the pruning and what's the point?

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you may work in a barbershop-
you may know how to cut hair…
(Bob Dylan)

self-pruning is a lot like trying to give myself a good haircut… in my desire and effort to accomplish balance and realize or release inner beauty outwardly, i run the risk of taking a little too much off here in order to compensate for having taken a little too much off there…

in our earnestness or our lack of discernment, we can begin an intentional self-pruning process that eventually cuts away everything in our lives including the vine itself...
and the branch that cuts itself from the vine withers.
we are unable to self-sustain.
we must be fed and replenished.

so what to do?
if we self-prune we run the risk of cutting our own heads off, but if we fail to see to it that we receive this pruning somehow, we cease to bear fruit in our lives
and the bearing of fruit seems to be the point.

Jesus says we are not to worry. the trees of the forests and the grasses of the fields do not prune themselves, nor do they require conservation officers to attend to them- and yet they thrive in the environments in which they are placed. they live in complete submission to the Divine, and as such are exactly what the Almighty Vinedresser intends for them to be.

God is the gardener. what do we need to do become part of in order to allow him to truly prune us that we would be truly fruit-bearing branches, delivering the nutrients and life from the vine to the rest of the world…

remember that fruit is God’s distribution system for seeds.

scripture: john 15.1-6; galatians 5.19-25; matthew 6.25-30