I trimmed the lilacs the other day. I wrote about them last year, when they gave surprise blooms completely out of season. But today I realized something profoundly obvious that I think is worth sharing anyway – the gardener gets to choose how they would like the garden to be.
That’s it. The gardener gets to choose. The wise gardener is certainly a caretaker, balancing the needs of each plant against the needs of others in the garden. But it’s more than just running interference and trying to meet the needs of each plant as best as they can. The gardener has a plan for the garden, something they’re trying to achieve that pleases them.
Pleasing the Gardener is no small thing. After all, the lilacs didn’t please me, and I dealt with them severely. “Those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God” (Romans 8:8). Left in their natural state, the lilacs are crowding out the plants on either side and they’re keeping the light from the plants below them. For their own health, for the health of the garden as a whole, they can’t be left to just do what they like best. They need taming, training, pruning, although I’ve always imagined that if they could speak, they would say they don’t like it much. But the thing is, the lilacs don’t know what’s best for them and they certainly don’t know what I have in mind for the garden.
I’m ashamed to admit, I’ve found that much of the time I’m a lot more interested in the Gardener adapting His plans to please me than I am in pleasing Him. I would like things to be the way I like, to do exactly what I like. I want to be shaped in a certain way. I’d like to dictate my ideal growing conditions. But like my lilacs, in my self-focus I’m very likely to crowd out those around me and starve those under me.
So God prunes me. Faith makes me content under His pruning; it agrees that God is God, that He gets to choose, and that He can be trusted to choose well (Hebrews 11:6). The irony is that the more I choose to allow Him to shape me in the way that pleases Him, the more healthy and fruitful I will be, and the happier I will be. Then I will say with David, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well” (Psalm 139:14).