Enjoy Life, Enjoy God
PRUNING
June 16, 2011
I'm not much of a gardener, but it occurs to be both necessary now and then, and it usually helps plants stay healthy.
"If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell...."
-- Mark 9:44-46 TNIV
Pruning is fairly simple, and I think Jesus' words here are simple as well. To enter the kingdom implies pruning, to trim our lives of the encumbrances that prevent us from kingdom living. Some things have to go, in other words. YET this passage has been misused--cutting off hands, feet, plucking out eyes. The truth is we know there's stuff in our lives that have to go. "Do it," Jesus says.
The grace today we have in Christ is not earned by chopping off body parts, but the joy and gratitude of discovering the kingdom of God means we don't want to foul it up with all the life-stealing junk in our lives. So Jesus says, "Do some pruning."
Joyfully,
Dale Patterson