We recently cut down a tree in our back yard. It was a flowering peach tree and gave shade but its fruit was worthless, in fact, it was far worse than no fruit at all because it bred flies and bees.
The scriptures talk a great deal about trees and their fruit. We are told by Christ that ”the tree is known by his fruit.” Trees play a prominent place in the word of God. Israel is compared to God’s fig tree, and David tells us in Psalm 1 that the righteous ”shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”

There is an interesting lesson to be learned in cutting down an unwanted tree. Christ again tells us about a certain man who had a tree that displeased him. His command was, ”Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?” To cut down our tree, we began at the top, and sawed off the branches one by one until only the main trunk was left, next we dug around the base of the tree and cut the large roots one by one until finally it was relatively easy to put a rope around the trunk and pull it over.

We can cut down the unwanted things in our lives that are hampering our spiritual growth in much the same way. Begin at the top, snip away at the little faults that each of us have and need to correct. By cutting these off one by one, we can more easily get rid of our major problems, we can learn self control easier if we do not allow ourselves to become angry over the little things that irritate us. We can better learn to love our enemies by first learning to love more deeply those we already know but do not have a strong feeling for either way. Look for their good traits, learn to think of them and tell others about their good qualities, in so doing we will grow to love those which previously we had just known slightly.

After we have stripped our unwanted tree of its branches of dislike, anger, thoughtlessness, pettiness and such like, we are better prepared to tackle the job of rooting out the large stump of the more serious faults. We do this by rooting, yes, by going below the surface and cutting these faults off at the very roots. A trunk can not stand without roots and if we will dig down in our own character and cut off the roots of evil, which are not seen, the visible trunk will no longer be able to stand and consequently it will topple helplessly to the ground, never more to rise again.

Now it is a lot of work to dig down and uncover the roots of hate, lust, selfishness, envy, pride and such like. In fact we do not like to think that such roots even exist, but like roots to the tree, they are often discovered by digging and many times the roots are found to be much larger than originally anticipated when the digging first began.

It is far better for us to do digging now than to wait for the Master Gardener who will judge every tree at his appearing and kingdom. If we will be honest with ourselves, we will humbly pray for the strength and courage to cut off all things which offend. Our tree of life will better produce fruits meet for repentance if the offending trees in our garden are cut away. Every gardener knows that evil trees growing too close to a good tree can cause it to wither, cease to produce fruit and finally die. How much better that we root out the evil trees ourselves so that the roots of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance may be able to shoot out and cause our branches to grow strong, so that we bring forth fruit, our leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever we do shall prosper.