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May 28, 2023 06:00am

Growing Through Suffering

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I’m not sure they’re going to make it.

Brittle. Barren. Lifeless.

These are all words that describe my mums this spring.

Confession time: I’m a mum-killer.

I have bought several containers of mums each year with dazzling aspirations of planting them and having them return the next fall in vibrant shades of scarlet, goldenrod, and fuchsia.

My first year, as a mum novice, I lugged home the hearty pots brimming with blooms, dug holes, and planted them right then and there. I admired the beautiful fall foliage in my yard and looked forward to seeing them again the next year. Little did I know that fall flowers don’t like to be planted in the fall; they want to be planted in the spring (and spring flowers like to be planted in the fall—plants are funny like that).

The next couple of times I bought mums, I let them run their fall course and left them crusty in their containers all winter only to be pitched in the garbage. One year, I even planned to go all Pinterest on them and spray paint the dead branches silver, hang ornaments on them, and turn my fall-failure into a Christmas win!

But this year, I was determined to make them last! I meticulously picked my favorite hues of mums from my local grocer, and I did my research! One of the things I learned is that you have to prune them. You have to snip back the dead branches to a certain length if you want beautiful, healthy growth the next year.

Jesus speaks about pruning in John chapter fifteen:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (John 15:1–2).

We are the branches.

Our pruning often comes about through suffering.

God uses the tragedies, the crises, the losses, and the pain to teach us to depend on him, strengthen our faith in him, and make us more like Jesus.

We may feel like God is taking our fruitfulness away—the loss of a job, the death of a child, a terminal diagnosis—but when God prunes what is already bearing fruit, he does so in order that we would produce more fruit.

As I’m writing this, I’m planning to prune my roses this weekend. Cutting off the dead sections of the stems will actually help them grow even fuller blooms this year. I know it needs to be done, but I’m afraid of making a wrong cut and ruining them. God, however, is a master gardener; he never makes a wrong snip. He knows exactly what needs to be removed from our lives in order to make us grow stronger and lovelier.

Elisabeth Elliot says, “We cannot know Christ and the power of his resurrection without also entering into the fellowship of his suffering.”

With that in mind, we should be thankful for any suffering which comes our way, and instead of fighting God’s chosen portion for us, we should learn to lean into the pain in order to be united in suffering with our crucified King.

In fact, if we are not being pruned, there is something wrong. Those who are his, he prunes; those who are not his, he cuts off to be thrown into the fire. Paul says to the Roman believers, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:16–17).

The proof is in the pruning.

That doesn’t make it any less painful.

We may cry out, like the apostle Paul, for God to remove our suffering; we may pray fervently, like our Lord Jesus, for the cup of suffering to pass from us. But if God, in his wisdom, goodness, and love, sovereignly allows the affliction to remain, may we also say as our forerunners did, “[Your] grace is sufficient for [me]” (2 Corinthians 12:9), and “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).

Elisabeth Elliot quotes lines from a sermon by Ugo Bassi:
Measure thy life by loss instead of gain;
Not by the wine drunk but by the wine poured forth;
For love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice,
And whoso suffers most hath most to give.

There couldn’t be truer words, for the strongest love ever known was proven by the greatest sacrifice ever made. When Jesus Christ gave his life on the cross to save ruined sinners, he loved his own to the uttermost. He went through the greatest suffering imaginable to bring about the greatest joy possible—redeeming a people for his inheritance and the Father’s glory from every nation, tribe, and tongue.
Similarly, our suffering is producing in us an “eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). When we can see the suffering in our lives as notch marks of growth under God’s expert care, we will be able to accept the hardships with greater peace and joy because they are the assurance that God is still working in us—and he will bring to completion what he began.
Wondering what happened to my mums?

After pruning them and properly storing them over the winter, I planted them in the ground following the final frost of spring. Now I wait with hopeful expectation for bright, new buds to emerge. We’ll just have to see if God provides the growth.