Trimming the Bad Away
By Jessica Brodie
Have you ever been at a luncheon or dinner and learned you could take the centerpiece home? That was me earlier this year at an awards luncheon I attended, and the pretty yellow-blossomed plant rode home with me in the front seat of my car. I set it in a sunny but shady spot near my kitchen window, and all was well for a week or so.
But then those cheerful yellow blossoms started to crisp and fall off. The lush deep-green leaves began to crackle. I didn’t over-water or under-water the plant, and it wasn’t getting too much sun, yet it was slowly dying. While I don’t have a natural green thumb, I do try really hard to keep my houseplants alive. So far I’ve been pretty successful. I have five of them now, one of which is about twenty years old—older than my firstborn child! So I was troubled about my quickly dying plant. Where was I going wrong?
My mom suggested I pluck away the brown, dried-out blossoms and leaves when I noticed them.
“Those kinds of plants are really sensitive,” she explained. “You just need to keep the dead parts trimmed away.”
I took my mom’s advice, and now four months later my plant is thriving. I water her once a week, carefully tug away anything brown or crispy when I notice it, and that’s all. Blossoms sprout consistently, and she’s lush and happy with lots of new growth.
It looks like she’s going to make it after all.
My mom is right—plants can be really sensitive. They need sunlight, water, consistency, and tender care. In this plant’s circumstance, part of that tender care involved grooming—some help eliminating the rot and decay before it took over.
In many ways, this reminds me of myself when it comes to my own spiritual and emotional health.
I, too, need sunlight—that is, guidance from the Lord, and love and affirmation from the people I care about.
I, too, need water—good and nutritious food, proper spiritual nourishment through church and godly influences, and healthy intellectual and emotional stimulation.
I, too, need consistency—peace and stability, quiet time alone or in nature where my soul can be refreshed without feeling like everything is spinning around in chaos and turmoil.
And just like my yellow-blossomed plant, I also need pruning when rotten, dead, and decaying elements begin to infect my life.
When I notice negative influences, bad habits, and other festering forces accumulate, it’s time to make some changes. Sometimes they pile up, these bad habits, without us even noticing. Then one day we wake up and realize we’ve gotten off track. Something small and seemingly innocuous has taken over and now threatens the whole.
Maybe it’s an addiction or an unresolved conflict, a worry or a fear. Maybe it’s something traumatic from long ago, yet it still haunts us, driving a wedge between us and the Lord.
At first it was like a tiny, crispy brown leaf at the edge of a plant. “It’s no big deal,” we tell ourselves. “No one’s perfect.”
Or we tell ourselves we’ll handle it when it starts to truly get out of hand.
But before we know it, it gets a foothold and starts to take us down.
Sometimes we recognize it and can trim those crusty, crispy dead leaves away in time. Other times it takes another person in our lives to lovingly help us get back on track.
But whatever it takes, until we get rid of it we are in a cycle of decay. All our blossoms are turning brown and starting to fall off. The whole plant is dying.
As Jesus said in John 15:1-4, “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, as I also 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” (NIV).
Today, I encourage you to take a look at your life. Are there any wilting, rotting, brown, and decaying blossoms on the fringes that you need to address? Is there anything in your heart that’s keeping you from the best relationship you can possibly have with God? From the true soul-peace you know is there but you just can’t seem to attain?
What do you need to do to make sure you are thriving instead of succumbing to the rot that threatens to drag us all down?
I hope you will pray with me:
Father God, help me strive to be filled with you, to live in alignment with you and in your ways, to love others, and to know that through you, sin and death and fear and anguish have no power over me. Help me have the strength to see the dead leaves in my own life that need to go. I love you, Lord. Amen.
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