A Time To Prune

 When Solomon wrote “for everything there is a season”, I wonder if he thought about pruning. He doesn’t say how one season ends and another begins, but you can be sure that some kind of transition occurs.

The colorful canopy of a crepe myrtle tree is gorgeous. It is strong and hardy, enduring heat and humidity. The delicate blossoms line boulevards and driveways all over Southern neighborhoods.  

Last week the newspaper published an article titled “Don’t Commit Crepe Murder.” I think they print it every year. Apparently winter is pruning season, at least for some plants. Many a husband is sharpening the blades of his chain saw! The writer called the crepe myrtle one of the most controversial and often-discussed plants among gardeners.  With all the controversy in the world, some find theirs in how to prune a tree!

When crepe myrtle trees are in a season of transition, usually in summer, their bark gets spotty and peels. If you don’t know much about crepe myrtles, the peeling bark looks like the tree is not doing well. It looks as if it’s dying, much like a snake shedding its skin. There is a way to prevent the peeling, but it involves lopping off the top of the tree.

But hold your clippers! There is still life inside! Pruning may fix the bark problem, but you lose the colorful canopy of the tree. This is why they it call “crepe murder”!

Are over-zealous loppers eyeing your life? Your fruit? Your lovely blossoms? Have you grown weary of the peeling? A lot has been said this year about cancel culture. Many things look dormant, peeling, over and done.  Lies of the enemy and the culture tell us it’s over. There is no hope, no new life.

Parents joyfully launched their children, but began the transition to an empty nest, missing a role they loved. Others lost career, ministry or financial security. Some lost their role as a wife, a husband.  Many buried their dead this year without the closure and honor of a proper funeral. Older people listened to guidelines of each “Phase” and heard “…but…if you are 65 and older”……as if they suddenly transitioned into “the elderly.”  Diminished…peeled back…in transition….feeling loss.

Transitions in our own life are often messy, sometimes painful. In the end something is being born. Transitions signal the death of one season as life brings forth another. Even if a new season is a good one, the transition is usually hard. Especially hard if you loved the previous one.  

Have you lost something this year? Are you grieving? Re-building strength and relationships? Has division struck too close to home? Have some judged you as dying? Ugly? Given up on you?

I tried to schedule 2020. As always, I prayed, planned and hoped….to draw closer to the Lord, build relationships, to minister, to support my grandchildren, to be a light to the world. I prioritized my activities. By every outward appearance, one could say I lost ground. Signs of life were scarce, at least to a casual passer-by. But inwardly, sap flowed and roots and relationships grew deeper.

From season to season, peeling to peeling, Paul must have felt the grief of transition.

    “Therefore, we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” 2 Cor 4:16-18

The towering canopy of an older tree that has escaped the lopping off is glorious!  You may have to strain your neck to see it. Accept that your peeling is producing that eternal weight of glory! Look up to see the life being displayed!

Someone may be driving through your neighborhood cringing at your peeling bark. Or laughing at your lopped off canopy. Others decide to be helpful and take a chain saw to your tree.

Don’t go judging another’s bark! Look instead for buds of new life. And when we see our own bare bark, be merciful and patient with ourselves as well. Have faith you will again have the smooth fresh bark of a new season and the blossoms that follow. Know that the inner man will overtake the outward and that works of the Spirit replace the dead works of the flesh.

There are legitimate reasons and seasons to prune a crepe myrtle. I don’t pretend to know or be a pruner. Aren’t you glad that the Lord is our master gardener? When he holds the shears, we don’t have to worry that he will misjudge whether there is life or not. He will not censor or cancel us. May we not lose patience and begin lopping off our own fruit or that of another.

How many times has a door seemed closed, a season over? Then suddenly new life springs forth. Fortunately, these even “crepe-murdered” trees usually take this abuse and spring back. How much more will we bloom in the hands of the master gardener.

“Do not rejoice over me, mine enemy. When I fall, I will arise. When I sit in darkness, The Lord will be a light to me.” Micah 7:8