Pruning

butterflySpring is a season of new beginnings and exquisite beauty.  Everything that just appeared lifeless and grey is bursting forth with new energy and color.  I call it the Renaissance, because it reminds me of new birth.  And for me, that’s a multi-dimensional experience.

Because so much life appears all around us, it’s easy to assume that renewal just sort of happens automatically.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  Springtime represents a triumph – a victory won through a fierce, even savage struggle and patient determination.

We love, for example, to see the trees or vines begin their growth for the year.  But it’s easy to forget how many of those plants were pruned – some of them nearly all the way back to the ground – in order to produce maximum beauty.

Plowing is another struggle of spring. [click to continue…]

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The Popcorn Tree

by Andy Wood on September 5, 2008

in Enlarging Your Capacity, LV Cycle, Turning Points

The LifeVesting Cycle

1. Allocate your resources.
2. Explore the possibilities.
3. Follow your passion
4. Execute your plan.
5. Protect your investment.

6. Enlarge your capacity

When I was still a kid, my dad built a flower box for my mom. We got some nice, rich soil from a place behind our house where we had a lot of mulch and trees. She planted some flowers in the box, and we were excited to see what would come out.

What came out was something that at first looked like a weed. But this was no weed. It was a tree. A popcorn tree, my dad said.

I was entranced. It was my first sense of fatherhood and stewardship, all rolled into one.

If you aren’t familiar with them, popcorn trees, or Chinese tallows, grow in moist climates. They grow rapidly, and can get pretty big. They make great shade and ornamental trees, and in the fall, their seeds split open to appear like popcorn.

I watched this little tree take off, and soon we transplanted it from the flower box to the front yard. We got more and more into trees, and soon found four more popcorn trees – then some redbuds and dogwoods. I had this sense of pride and ownership in all of them, but none more than the original – the queen of the yard – as she quickly grew taller than the eaves of our house.

Then one day the unthinkable happened. I came up the street to my house, and found the most horrific sight. Someone (my dad) had taken shears and whacked my tree off at about six feet. The queen of the yard now had a crew cut.

It was ugly.

Shameful.

Hideous.

“Pruning,” he called it.

“Disaster” was what I called it.

Of course, my dad knew a whole lot more about trees and all things agricultural than I ever will. (I once asked him, “How’d you get so smart?” He said, “I keep my ears open and my mouth shut.”)

Anyway, the queen began to reshape. To spread. To grow, not just taller, but shapelier, even more beautiful.

This life lesson became even more applicable to me as I grew spiritually. [click to continue…]

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PisaThe people in Pisa needed professional help.  Seems their most famous landmark was, well, leaning.

Well, duh!

Actually, a few years ago someone discovered that the Tower was very slowly beginning to lean too much.  So the city fathers had an emergency meeting and decided there was only one thing to do.  They would bring in architects and professional builders who would make sure the tower didn’t topple over.  One mandate, however:  keep the tower from falling over, but don’t correct the tilt!  In other words, make sure it stays like it is.  After all, who would travel to see the standing Tower of Pisa?

It’s amazing the time and effort – sometimes even large amounts of money – we will invest in order to remain the same.  And that in a world where the constant is change.

If you’re reading this, regardless of who you are, change is the one thing that is required of you, as well.  It’s the one thing you and I have in common.  It’s also the one thing we have a tendency to resist.  Leo Tolstoy once said, “Everyone wants to change humanity, but no one wants to change himself.”

Jesus once told a story about a farmer, some seed, and four types of ground.  The seed, He said was the “word of the Kingdom.”  Only one kind of ground (a type of heart) received the seed to the degree that it made lasting change.  Something would have to change about the ground to experience the maximum effect (change) of the seed.

There are four types of life change, based on the Parable of the Sower.  You are somewhere on this list right now:

[click to continue…]

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