You be the Coffee Tree

Sue and I have decided to take another run at growing hanging potted plants:

Not our house. Not our hanging plants.
Not our circus.  Not our monkeys. 

The trick, we’re told, is to water them every day. No, water them only when the pot feels light.  Use Miracle Gro.  Pinch the buds.  We’ve heard it all, and with our house on the market, if it doesn’t sell it will be because we have not pinched our potted plants. 

Of course, no one who's ever been to Sunday school can hear the pinch-the-plant piece without thinking of Jesus’ assertion that God does the same with us in order to make us more fruitful:

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.  (John 15:1-2)

No offense, but I’ve heard it, lived it, been there.  Sunday School.  Discipleship 101.  But have you ever feel more than “pinched” or “pruned?”  I know readers have, because you’re coming out of the woodwork to share your story with me.  Then I heard from a missionary couple our daughter stayed with recently. 

Hannah traveled with a friend to Guatemala recently to visit missionaries Shawn and Natalie Sagert, who serve with Commission to Every Nation.  Shawn and Natalie’s home church is Southside, in Chilliwack, BC where we happen to attend as well.  (Nice that our oldest kids picked their church and it’s the same one Sue and I go to).  Shawn and Natalie were commenting on the Guatemalan coffee industry in their latest newsletter, and went on to make this observation: 

"I’m from BC so I at least know that all fruit-bearing trees need regular pruning to produce the best yields, yet I have never seen a plant treated so brutally as the coffee tree.  Just as it’s peaking in production output, the tree is not so much pruned but hacked all the way down to just one stem and left to begin life all over again.  Has anyone else felt like that?  It’s God’s business to shape us any way He chooses in order for Him to draw out our potential.  In life, hack jobs can happen at any stage of growth without regard to how you feel you're doing." 

Now THAT got my attention.  Ever feel hacked right to the ground at your prime?  Shawn writes, “It’s God’s business to shape us any way He chooses in order for Him to draw out our potential.”  And you can trust Him.  However hacked you may feel at times, perhaps even now, there’s a deeper meaning, a bigger perspective, a larger narrative of which your story is part.  “Resistance is futile.” Oh, you can resist all right, and shrivel and die and grow bitter with self pity.  Or you can open your heart to the hand of God, who can use the adversity of circumstance in a fallen world to re-shape your heart into something new, with a peace and a purity – fruitfulness more invigorating and lasting than that cup of jo in the morning.