I understand that we are currently preparing in the Claydons for Buckingham’s Best Kept Village. A competition open to villages and small towns throughout Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes. Entry is via parish and town councils as well as village hall committees and other active community groups. What a great way to come together as a community to get our villages ready for this competition.
The incentive to get our villages ready must be great for our gardens, pathways, displays and public spaces. Because a great presentation or display reveals the passion of our community. We prune our plants to make them more fruitful, more flowers and healthy. We trim our trees and shrubs as part of good husbandry. We maintain our hedgerows because they are nature’s motorways and infrastructure – by which wildlife in all its biodiversity moves throughout the land.
Jesus Christ draws our attention to His Father as the Divine Gardener. He said: “I am the true Vine, and my Father is the Gardener”. He lops off every branch that doesn’t produce. And he prunes those branches that bear fruit for even larger crops (John 15:1-2).
Life itself is a challenge which often requires regular spiritual pruning starting with me. During such periods, we have many question marks like, “Why does it hurt so much?” “When will it end?” If we are to become resilient transformed persons in this community, what God wants us to be, we have to be open to those times when the spiritual secateurs are applied by loving hands.
The pruning process is not necessarily done for beauty, aesthetics or surroundings. The pruning process – cutting away the things that hinder or prevent our growth – provides for a continuous conversion or transformation in which we are converted from the irrelevant to the relevant, from being just busy to being fruitful and productive. The useless non-fruit bearing growth – the suckers that take away life but give no fruit like the ivy in our garden – must be cut away. If we are not able to give up, then we will not be able to give out.
Someone once said, “He who knows the why of the things can always cope with the what. As we journey together to understand the why of God’s plan for us in, for example, the many funerals this village appears to be experiencing at present, so are we able to cope with the what and give ourselves more confidently to the Divine Gardener, which can only make us stronger to face life and future with greater confidence and certainty. Amen.
With every blessings
Reverend Rickey Simpson-Gray
Team Vicar for the Parish of the Claydons