A cool part of the devotion-journaling journey, at a prayer gathering I attended, was to prune a spider plant, but instead of casting to the fire for unproductive dryness, these branches were making new offshoots and are to be replanted and grown. Easy for a spider plant because it doesn’t even need soil that much, it just grows and grows.  But yes, even better for me to plant it in it’s most healthy nutritional soil… 

Our lives, grown, fed, watered, pruned, cared for, loved… God does this pruning thing in love so we can bear MORE fruit, as stronger branches reach further, and good fruit makes good seeds… God’s got ideas for us with Him, we are to know then that they involve us! We need to know that He never leaves us.

So like plants, SOME plantings and plans are easy, like this spider plant just begging to get it’s shoots to other places. Some plantings are HARD, tough to nurture and are constant care-needy… Some won’t take in this lifeline but the effort still teaches and reaches…

God’s plans, plantings, and waterings are God-gifted and we know God wins, so we should soak our soul and soil in Him, watching the results in the spring and summer after our winter weather woes…

So let us regroup to fruit… We may feel pain in pruning or we may feel a burden lightened – either way Let Us Go God’s Way…

Amen

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Jesus speaks:

“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[a] 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.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.  This is my command: Love each other.

John 15:1-17

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Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created. James 1:17-18