One Broken Shrub

To Take it Down a Notch


We planned to prune the Echium candicans this winter, as it had overtaken the cedar glider on our front deck. Come spring, the shrub would prevent us from gliding through the air of a soft evening awash with budding.


But the grasshopper asked us to wait. And who am I to refuse a grasshopper? So we waited, and winter sped on by, and the Echium loomed over the glider, unpruned.

Then the unbridled growth of its heavy limbs overwhelmed the trunk and it split right in two.  So I planned to cut off the broken part and cast it into the trash.

But it’s not so easy, cutting out the broken part. I’ve delayed, studying my subject, trying to determine the best places to cut. I want to excise as much brokenness as I can, you know. But I also want to leave behind enough shrub to heal, to renew itself.

And now the broken part, the part I was going to throw away like unwanted garbage, is blooming. It’s bathing my view with beauty. It’s feeding hummingbirds. It’s showing me that even in its brokenness, it has value.

It invites me to look at it like God looks at me.

Are not five sparrows sold for two cents? Yet not one of them is forgotten before God.
Luke 12:6 (NASB)