Freedom in the pruning

By Bishop Leonard Fairley

I thought about writing something for this month’s article on freedom and liberty since July 4 is the day we celebrate our country’s independence. It may seem a stretch, but what if true freedom comes with the courage of letting go?

Freedom comes with the courage to let go of what holds one captive. We must be willing to let go of one good so that another can be born.

The lawn maintenance guy cut our hedges so close to the ground, they look nothing like their former selves. He even cut the branches of our beautiful crape myrtle. I wanted to fire him on the spot.

“They will come back more beautiful than before,” he tried consoling me.

What I could not see—what I refused to see—was how beauty can be set free in the act of pruning.

What seems lost in the midst of the struggle is the very beauty waiting to be revealed. What if necessary endings make room for what is yet to be?

I have always heard that when someone loses their hair during chemotherapy it grows back more beautiful than before. I watch for signs of the spring, when daffodils return through “the cold and snow of winter,” and fruit trees begin to bear abundant fruit after pruning.

We rejoice in Jesus after the ugliness and brutality of the crucifixion when he breaks forth from the grave in Easter joy and triumph, granting us the hope of resurrection and freedom from the bondage of sin, evil and death.

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit,” John 12:24 reminds us.

What are you holding onto in your life that has you bound and captive? What are you longing to be set free from? Are you willing to go through the pruning to be set free and born again?

Be the Gardener of My Soul

Spirit of the Living God, be the gardener of my soul.

For so long I have been waiting,

Silent and still experiencing a winter of the soul.

But now, in the strong name of Jesus Christ,

I dare to ask:

Clear away the dead growth of the past.

Break up the hard clods of custom and routine,

Stir in the rich compost of vision and challenge,

Bury deep in my soul the implanted Word,

Cultivate, and water and tend my heart,

Until new life buds and opens and flowers.

Amen.

—Richard Foster (“Prayers From the Heart,” 1994)