Sunday, March 17, 2013

Spring: A Time of New Beginnings

Spring has arrived here in Utah, and my wife and I worked in the garden getting things ready for planting. We have a number of fruit trees, and one important step is to prune them so they will produce better fruit and remain healthy throughout the year.

Perhaps, the concepts of spring and pruning could also be applied to our own lives. From time to time, we sometimes allow bad habits to grow out of control, leading to an unwieldy character that languishes over time. One might say that rules (or carefully pruning) can deny one the ability to grow, but simple growth does not lead to better results. Such pruning of bad habits can allow us to strengthen the parts of our character can lead to better, long-term outcomes. We weed out any weak branches, giving more room and light to other development.

Furthermore, when the fruit starts to appear, you have to thin out the tree or remove a lot of the fruit so that more of the tree's energy is focused on that which remains. This might sound counter-intuitive in the beginning, but with our own trees, we have been able to huge apples because we have taken the time to care for the tree in the early spring.

So, now that spring has arrived, what part of your own life might need a little pruning?