Pruning

Saturday morning I pruned my vegetable garden. Earlier in the week, I brought my mother over to my house to show her my raised-bed garden. I was sooooooo proud of it! My mother is a master-gardener so I thought she would be impressed with my 2nd-time-ever vegetable garden. Well, she was impressed all right but not in a good way. She got right with the program, telling me that I needed to prune all the suckers off the tomatoes, cut off the remaining blossoms, in fact, cut the tops out of the tomato plants. If I didn't, my tomatoes might not ripen properly. I have LOTS of tomatoes and some are pretty big, but they are all green. Next, she suggested I remove some of the excess foliage from my one (huge) zucchini plant so I could actually see if I have any more zucchini in there. I thought I had two - ahem - I had seven. Then she said something that kind of hit me in a different way than she intended, "You've watched me raising tomatoes for years; I thought you knew this."

Saturday, as I pruned away at my plants, I thought about my mother's comment. How much am I counting on my children, grandchildren, students... knowing what to do because I assume they have paid attention to what I have done? The truth is that I did watch my mother plant and cultivate her flowers and vegetables for at least a couple decades. But I didn't really learn anything until I asked questions and she provided the answers. She was always willing to share her knowledge; I wasn't always paying attention.

We have to speak the words. Do we want our children to be polite, well-mannered? Instruction is needed. Do we want our kids to love books and reading? We must read to them. Are we hoping our children will find a valuable relationship with Christ? We have to talk to them, share our Christian experience, pray with them. We cannot assume it will be caught - it must be taught.

The other thing I realized as I was pruning was that it was taking a very long time. I spent well over an hour at the job. I realized that I could have nipped the suckers (little growths that appear between a branch and the main stems of the plant) as they appeared and it would have taken just a few minutes. Since I waited until I had fruit-loaded plants, I had to be quite careful when I cut, and the job was far more tedious than necessary. The same is true in our lives as parents, as teachers. If, from the very beginning, we start right and consistently do all that is required to raise up well-mannered readers who love Christ (my prior examples), the outcome may be what we hope for - fruit bearers. I'm grateful to my mother for all the lessons she has taught me over the years. I just hope I remember them better than I did the pruning.