The Purpose of Pain
In the apple-growing state of Maine in America, I was visiting a farmer
friend and saw an apple tree so loaded down with fruit that the branches had
to be propped up to keep them from breaking under the weight of apples.
When I remarked about the fruitfulness of the tree, my friend said to me,
“Go over and look at that tree’s trunk down near the bottom.”
There I saw that the tree had been badly wounded by a big gash across its
side. The farmer explained, “That is something we have learned about apple
trees. When the growing tree tends to run to wood and leaves and not to
fruit, we stop it by wounding it, by cutting into its bark. And we don’t
know why, but almost always the result is that the tree turns its energies
to producing fruit.”
Could that be a parable for some of us human apple trees in the human
orchard?
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