Pruning

“Mum, please can you Roblox-oof* the roses?” I was pruning heavily; my son hoped it was to do them in, rather than do them good. I’m not aiming to kill them, I explained, but if they die I actually don’t mind. (Roses aren’t my favourite but they came with the house.)

Roses are apparently the sort that, if you want them to really thrive, you cut them right back each year. They could well say, “You don’t care if I live or die! You don’t want what’s best for me at all!” Whether the gardener is a pro, or an indifferent jerk like me, it would all look the same to the roses. But the heart of the gardener would be different.

Which had me thinking about God. It’s easy to look at a loss, a wrench, a wound, and see evidence that, if there’s a God somewhere, that God is at best indifferent to our pain, and at worst wants us pulled out and thrown away. But if God caused me to exist (and not the other way round) then it makes sense that some God things won’t make sense. That they’ll be beyond my mental/emotional/physical reach. Like for the hypothetical sentient roses.

If you have trouble believing that the gardener is good, when your branches are stripped and it’s cold and the other plants don’t seem to be getting such rough treatment, then you’re in good company. But you’re also in good hands.

* "oof" is the noise that characters make when the die in the game platform Roblox