Pruning

Reading Psalm 131, along with Eugene Peterson's coinciding chapter in A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, today I was struck with how closely much of what I am going through may be a further pruning. Has it taken another deployment to prune me, to remove something from my life that is inhibiting growth? Or was I perhaps deemed pruned enough to be useful for this deployment? It's a tough call.

Pruning is a humbling process and, as Peterson rightly points out, these processes are often quite painful - and sometimes lead to some shouting and screaming. But in the end, after you've pruned back the rose bush, it produces more - and healthier- roses. Separation from family is painful pruning, but it definitely added to the character of my family, as well as my own. I know it will again. I suppose there is some more pruning going on that has led to this deployment.

But I also see that God has used my past growth opportunities, as well as other things in my life, to prepare me specifically for such a time as this. Everything about this deployment (save the being apart from my family) seems to fit. From the mission of the unit, the people in it, the "little signs" I see here and there (the name of Task Force Paladin fits with my Halo username and I am replacing another AG chaplain in-country, among several others) I see order out of this seeming chaos. I am hearing God's voice in it, is what I guess I am saying.

So I suppose there are elements of both pruning and utility. I humbly accept the compliment of being able to be used while also humbly accepting the pruning I am receiving in having to be used in this way. Does that make sense? God is creative, is He not? He can chastise while blessing, or bless while chastising. What a paradox. I have a year to fathom it, I suppose. I will be as a weaned child with his mother - not screaming anymore for the basics, but patient and hopeful within God's faithful parenting.

May both effects be powerful this year. Make me what you need me to be, O Lord - and make me useful as well, in the process. Oh, and God; could you build in my family and my church the same spirit I know you are trying to build in me?