Culling

Plowing, Planting, (Waiting), Cultivating, Culling, Harvesting…

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

     With certain types of fruit trees, there is a need to cull the fruit off the tree. Essentially if this tree is left to bear fruit on it’s own, the fruits tend to be smaller and somewhat lower quality. But if you take a tree that has very young fruit or blossoms before the fruit has gotten a chance to grow and remove some of the fruit/blossoms, when the harvest season comes, you’ll end up with much larger and higher quality fruit. The reasoning behind this is pretty simple, the tree has a finite number of leaves and can only take in so much nutrients through the roots, essentially there is limited resources for the tree to use in bearing fruit. If you remove (prune) some of the fruit-bearing portions of the tree, you are forcing the tree to focus it’s energy on the limited number of fruit-bearing portions. But focusing the usage of resources to fewer fruits, you end up with larger and better quality fruit.

     For me, I know this means I should focus more on the things that really matter. Like eternal-stuff: Showing people the way home, developing spiritual endurance, praying, loving people, loving God. Care less about other stuff: like my car (Gotta fix the alignment), my computer (Should I upgrade my laptop drive from a 40gb, 5400 rpm HD to a XXgb, 7200 rpm HD?), video games (I played co-op on Halo 2 for 6 hrs on July 4th.)

     In addition, I’ve been thinking a bit about this in terms of ministry. Does it mean that my focus should be in areas that bear more fruit? or better fruit? And how does this apply to a church congregation as a whole? Are we supposed to cut off some ministries because they are not visibly bearing fruit? hmm… (just rambling…) Yea, I’m thinking some of my fruit is really crappy quality.