We inadvertently ended up at a bonsai demonstration. For over an hour we watched a real artist take a four foot tall tree and ever so cleverly cut and trim so as to prepare to turn it into a bonsai beauty. I winced as I watched him trim off branches that I thought should stay. He explained that when given a choice of two always cut off the thickest one. The thinner one will be more pliable. After he had the branches he wanted to keep he took heavy gauge wire and first wrapped it around the trunk and then around the remaining branches. He could then bend the wire now holding a branch and form it to grow in any direction or shape he wanted.
I could not but think of John 15 where Jesus said, “I am the vine.” Jesus talks about pruning. “He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit.” After the man was finished he said, “Now come back in forty years and see how beautiful it will have become.” I sat and thought of the things I have lost through the years. Some of them I desperately wanted to keep. But once gone, really gone, now decades later I think I understand a little bit more. Maybe I need to wait another forty years to really understand.
When you pray for something you really want and it doesn’t come to you, please be patient. The Master Bonsai Artist is at work pruning and bending. One of my favorite authors wrote, “If we could see the end from the beginning we would never question the way our Father has led us.” Happiness in life so often is the fruit of trusting the Artist.
Written by Roger Bothwell on May 24, 2009
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
rogerbothwell.org