While I walked through the peach orchards a few weeks ago, I noticed hundreds, maybe thousands, of small green peaches lying on the ground. It seemed so wasteful until I understood the purpose. My farmer husband told me the growers thin the fruit so that what remains will grow larger.
It made me think about how God often needs to thin out our lives as well. Last year I wrote a blog to you about pruning branches, which can relate more to sin, and my blog from Hebrews 12 about laying aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles us. This peach thinning insight goes beyond simply pruning sin. Many of us think of thinning as God removing bad things from our lives. But often He removes good things that compete with better things. The peach tree is not being punished. It is being prepared to produce quality fruit.
In 2005 we joined an Alaskan mission and wrote Courage letters to our support base. In one letter I penned a poem that is not about thinning peaches, but it is about being so busy that our fruitfulness never comes to maturity.
A Rhyming Reason to Refocus
Right in the middle of a very busy day,
I took a hurried moment to bow my head and pray.
I would have run off quickly
But something seemed to say, “Be still.
“Your intensely flustered flurry,
Your pressured heat and hurry,
Your anxious wiles and worry only serve
To disconnect you from the Vine!
“Do you think that you can make it?
That your intellect can shake it?
That your strength can really make it
Happen in your time?
“Can a branch produce a cluster
With a glowing healthy luster
Without the Vine to muster up
Its sweetest wine?
“For your fruit comes not by straining,
But by gentle, quiet waiting
On the One whose living water
Fills your soul.
“Child, be still and listen to Me
Whisper peace that will come through Me
As you give the time that’s due Me
From yourself.”
So I listened and I waited
On the One who so had stated
That His peace was under-rated
In my mind.
All the while my work was calling,
And I hesitated stalling,
For it seemed the sky was falling
And I’d never finish all I had to do.
Yet as I sat there stewing
About all that needed doing,
A gentle peace began its brewing
In my soul.
Slowly He began the changing
With a quiet rearranging
By exchanging my poor thinking
For His own.
All that mattered was His nearness,
Which I saw with renewed clearness,
And He changed me to be fearless
In His love.
There my busy day was brighter
And my to-do list seemed much lighter
As I found that as a writer
I’m renewed!
As I reread that poem twenty years later, standing among those peach trees, I realized the lesson had been there all along.
The peaches scattered across the orchard floor were not diseased fruit. They were not bad peaches. In fact, they were perfectly healthy young peaches. Yet if they all remained on the tree, none would reach their full potential. The tree’s energy would be divided among too many competing demands.
The grower understands what the tree itself cannot.
Sometimes less fruit now produces better fruit later.
Jesus spoke of a similar process in our lives:
“Every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (John 15:2).
Notice that He is not pruning dead branches in this verse. He is pruning fruitful ones.
That truth can be unsettling.
We readily understand why God removes sinful habits, unhealthy relationships, or destructive patterns. But what about the good things? What about worthwhile projects, meaningful commitments, enjoyable activities, and even ministry opportunities?
Sometimes God lovingly removes things that are good because they are competing with what is best.
Hebrews 12:1 instructs believers to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily entangles us.” The writer makes a distinction between weights and sins. Some things are sinful and must be abandoned. Other things are simply weights. They may not be wrong, but they slow us down in our pursuit of Christ.
A peach tree does not need diseased fruit removed in order to be thinned. It simply has too much fruit.
How often is that true of us?
We crowd our calendars, fill our minds, multiply our commitments, and then wonder why our spiritual fruit seems small and immature. We strain harder, work longer, and push ourselves further, while the Master Gardener quietly invites us to release something.
Not because He wants less fruit.
Because He wants better fruit.
Love that runs deeper.
Joy that lasts longer.
Peace that remains steady.
Patience that endures hardship.
Faith that has been tested and proven genuine.
The thinning may feel like loss for a season. Opportunities pass. Plans change. Certain dreams are delayed or even surrendered. Yet the Gardener sees what we cannot. He knows which peaches must fall so that the remaining fruit can grow sweet and mature.
Perhaps that is why David wrote, “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after…” (Psalm 27:4).
One thing.
Not twenty things.
Not a hundred worthy pursuits.
One thing.
We see the same principle in the story of Martha and Mary:
“Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed…” (Luke 10:41-42).
Martha wasn’t doing bad things. She was doing good things. Jesus simply pointed her toward the better thing.
The mature Christian life is often less about adding more and more and more, and more about allowing God to narrow our focus until Christ Himself becomes our chief desire.
The peaches on the orchard floor reminded me that God’s thinning is never punishment. It is preparation. The hand that removes is the same hand that nourishes. And the fruit He leaves behind will be all the sweeter because of what He chose to take away.
The next time I walk through the peach orchards, I doubt I’ll see waste lying on the ground. I’ll see the wisdom of the grower. What once appeared to be loss is actually an investment in sweetness yet to come.
And perhaps when God removes something from my own life—a dream, an opportunity, a responsibility, or simply a season that has ended—I will remember those little green peaches beneath the trees and trust the hand of the Master Gardener.
He is not reducing fruitfulness.
He is preparing it.
And perhaps that is why His invitation remains the same today as it was twenty years ago:
“Child, be still and listen to Me…”
For sometimes the sweetest fruit grows not from our striving, but from our abiding.
Walking in the Vine Light 