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Dear friends,
Three carrotwood1 trees once grew next door to my childhood home. When pruned well, they flourished. When pruned poorly, they died.
Do we need pruning, too? Whom can we trust to prune us?
My thoughts today on these topics and my recent health challenges (praise God, I’m now fine!) are up at FPR:
“Three Trees Once Grew”
Warmly yours,
Dixie
No, not ash trees, though I misidentify them as such in the essay. Whoops.
“He does not splint where he should sever and he does not sever where he should splint. I am not as willing a tree as I ought to be—I’d rather grow weakly and comfortably than trust in a future branch structure that I cannot see. Yet Someone sees. Can I trust in Him?”
I’m reminded of a passage I clung to in some difficult times — “A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench” — I read a commentary on it once, and the way he speaks of Christ as the restorer of these weak things reminds me of what you’re saying here. I’ll link the whole thing, but this is my favorite passage:
Brother and sister suffering from any sorrow, and bleeding from any wound, there is a balm and a physician. There is one hand that will never be laid with blundering kindness or with harshness upon our sore hearts, but whose touch will be healing, and whose presence will be peace.
The Christ who knows our sins and sorrows will not break the bruised reed. The whole race of man may be represented in that parable that came from His own lips, as fallen among thieves that have robbed him and wounded him and left him bruised, but, blessed be God! only ‘half dead’; sorely wounded, indeed, but not so sorely but that he may be restored. And there comes One with the wine and the oil, and pours them into the wounds. ‘The bruised reed shall He not break.’
https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/mac/isaiah-42.html
“Yet while I sometimes make mistakes in my pruning, I know the good Lord never makes a false cut. He does not splint where he should sever and he does not sever where he should splint. I am not as willing a tree as I ought to be—I’d rather grow weakly and comfortably than trust in a future branch structure that I cannot see. Yet Someone sees. Can I trust in Him?
Lord, give us eyes to see.”
I needed to read this today, right now, Dixie. Thank you. I pray you continue to recover—and to prune wisely in the gardens God has given you.