I Love Roses

One of the things I enjoyed most about living in Portland was growing Hybrid Tea Roses. Portland is known as the “City of Roses” because the climate (not much good for anything else) and soil are ideal for growing fabulously beautiful roses, many of them developed in Portland. So I decided to go all out and grow a variety of specialty roses in our backyard. The problem with hybrid roses is that they are very persnickety (a Swedish word meaning “picky”) and need a lot of attention. They have to be inspected on a regular basis for a variety of possible diseases, especially fungi and mildews (encouraged by the cool, wet climate). It’s important to give the roses plenty of water (but not too much water) and good rose food. Most importantly, roses need regular, systematic, and vigorous pruning. Those unfamiliar with growing roses question why it is necessary to cut so much back on those beautiful plants. However, if there is going to be any chance of having a healthy, beautiful, productive rose, it must be pruned.

I remember my first year pruning my roses. The need for pruning was obvious in some cases. If a “cane” was dead or diseased, made obvious by it being dark and bearing no fruit, it had to be completely removed. If that cane was not cut out and thrown away it would eventually spread disease and even destroy the entire plant. The second need for pruning was more difficult. When a rose has borne a beautiful flower, as it begins to stop blossoming the flower itself must be cut off. And not just the flower but the cane must be cut back to the next place of potential fruitfulness. On a rose the beautiful flower is the “terminal bud,” the ultimate product of a season of fruitfulness. However, that terminal bud sends a signal back to the roots to stop the growth on that cane. It’s OK to pause and admire the blossom but before long, unless you want all growth to simply stop, it must be pruned back.

That memory brings to mind my “life verse”: “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” (John 15:5). The life and nutrients of the plant travel from the roots through the vine and finally, into the branches. The branches exist solely to produce the fruit that demonstrates the dynamic and nature of the vine. If you separate the branches from the vine they are meaningless and worthless, capable of producing nothing at all, ultimately becoming a source of disease and death. Jesus uses a double negative (not good English grammar) to emphasize his point – “apart from me, independently of me, separated from me, you can do absolutely nothing at all.” So if we function like a “cane” on a rose, it only makes sense that our health and fruitfulness requires consistent, systematic, vigorous pruning.

“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” (John 15:1-2). Fortunately our gardener, our vinedresser and pruner, is our Father God. Because he has created each of us to be entirely unique, he alone know what kind of pruning we need in order to be increasingly fruitful. Unfortunately, some branches are either so diseased or even dead, to keep the vine from being destroyed those branches have to be cut off and thrown away. “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” (John 15:6). However, even those branches that bear the most beautiful blossoms, if they are to continue to grow and bear more fruit, must be pruned. It’s OK to pause and admire the beauty of all God has done in and through the branch, but the time will come when that “terminal bud” will need to be removed.

The word (Greek kathairo) Jesus uses for “prune” means “to cleanse from impurity, to make pure; to make free from corruption, sin and guilt; to make genuine or blameless; to prune.” That’s why Jesus said, “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you” (John 15:3). (This word is also related to the one translated, “pulling down” strongholds and “casting down” imaginations in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5.) The reality is that the seeds of disease and death are present in every accomplishment we experience in life. If we take too much time to focus on those accomplishments, and maybe even build a monument to them, they will inevitably become corrupted and may even become a source of disease and death rather than life and blessing.

Lately I’ve been meditating on one of the “hard sayings” of Jesus: “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me” (John 12:24-26). The goal of our lives is not to be important or honored, to have a place of privilege and status; the goal of our lives is simply to bear fruit – good fruit, abiding fruit, increasing fruit – fruit that reflect the life of Christ flowing into and through our lives as a result of our abiding relationship with him. Fruit that is not just admirable but rather fruit that is a source of life and health to others – fruit that is good to eat. “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples” (John 15:8). That will mean submitting to the Father’s pruning, but we can rest in the confidence that the Father loves us and has only purposed good in and through our lives.