Learning from a Tea plant

Learning from a tea plant

As a gardener expects fruit from his vineyard; our God who planted us in His vineyard, He expects good fruit from each one of us. There are different processes through which the gardener can get more fruit out of his plants.

Ö    Cleaning: Cutting the extra branches and cleaning the surrounding in order to get more fruits

Ö        Budding: Binding a good stem with the plant which is not yielding much fruit

Ö        Pruning: A major cutting down of branches, retaining only the main stem

God was teaching me a lesson from learning from the pruning process of tea plant, which I saw in the Nilgirs. A tea plant gives its leaves for many years and after 20 - 30 years, the gardener cuts off all the branches, with only the main stem remaining. Once this is done, for quite some time, the tea plant does not give any leaves. It is a silent period. After a certain period, it starts have leaves, giving much more than before.

In our spiritual journey too, God may use different ways of pruning. All of us need to arrive at a stage where we can realize that we are nothing. In ministry, we may have many things to be proud of, but God wants us to rely on Him and nothing else. Our focus should be on God than the experience we have had or the things we received from God. God wants to bear more fruit than before. This happens like the tea plant, when we have arrived at the stage, where we have completely surrendered before Him.

During pruning, the gardener spends a good amount of time with the tea plants for cleaning, cutting, putting manure and medicines on the cut areas. So is the case with God. When God prunes us, He also spends more time with us, investing in our lives. This leads to us being more fruitful in the areas where God has placed us.