The Gardener's Gaze

I am not much of a gardener. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy fresh vegetables and fruit I just don't have much experience in working in the garden. However, I have had the honor of pastoring some very fine gardeners. I have always been amazed at their knoweldge of their crops. I could look out over their fields of corn or examine their tomatoes and determine that they looked great. This reply would be met with a laugh as they proceeded to tell me all that was wrong with their crops and what had to be done in order to have a successful crop. I quickly learned that the gaze of the gardener was much keener than mine when it came to expecting the crops.

Life is pretty much the same way. When I look at my life I may come to the conclusion that everything is going pretty well. You see, we tend to look at the surface. If we are going to church, serving the Lord, raising a family, doing our job as husbands and wives then we tend to think all is well. However, I have come to realize that the Gardener's Gaze is quite a bit more keen as He inspects the fruit of our life. In John 15:1-4 we read these words concerning the Gardener's Gaze: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will 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."

God is the Gardener who observes our life. When we are producing no fruit he removes us, if we are producing a little fruit, he prunes us so we will produce more, and when we remain in Him we will produce much fruit. God longs for us to produce fruit in our spiritual lives so that He will receive glory. Too often, our lives are like a stagnant tree that remains dormant year after year. Every season you look to see if it will produce something and every season you are disappointed. You and I go through the same motions day after day. We wake up, eat our breakfast, go to work, come home, rush around to deliver our kids to practices and games, come home, go to bed, and then start all over again the next day...and we call this life! We look at our lives and we surmise that we are doing okay. However, I have to believe that the Gardener looks at us and sees so much potential and so little production. He gets out the pruning shears of adversity because He knows that when He frees us from the weeds of mediocrity and exposes us to the warmth of His presence we will once again start bearing fruit. You see, God saved us from our sins so that we might live lives that would attest to His glory. Once, this pruning has taken place, our eyes start focusing on God and we begin spending time in His presence and what was once a fruitless life moves from producing some fruit, to more fruit, to much fruit. When our lives start proclaiming that Jesus Christ is a treasure that no one can live without, then we truly begin to glorfiy Him. The Gardener then gazes at us and smiles...because finally we are starting to become what He had in mind from the beginning.