Thank You for Cutting Me Down

I've been listening to one of my favorite talks by Hugh B. Brown, "God is the Gardener."  I bought a copy of it on CD from Deseret Book a few months after my husband and I were married.

 During these last couple of weeks, I've played this talk several times over.  My boy, Micah, loves it when I play it and always stops whatever he is doing and curls up next to the speakers to listen.  (It's really sweet and tugs on my heart as a mother. He's such a great kid.)  He knows how to recognize a good thing.  This talk is classic!!   I am sure that it's loved by so many in the Church because it resonates so well with our experiences in life that "bring us low" or shake us up.  I am truly thankful the for the moments in my life where I have been "cut down." I'm so thankful to know that I have a Father in Heaven who "loves me enough to hurt me."  He knows who I am to become.  I trust the Gardner!

"God will have a humble people. Either we can choose to be humble or we can be compelled to be humble. Alma said, “Blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble.” (Alma 32:16)

Let us choose to be humble. " - President Ezra Taft Benson "Beware of Pride"

"Sixty-odd years ago I was on a farm in Canada. I had purchased the farm from another who had been somewhat careless in keeping it up. I went out one morning and found a currant bush that was at least six feet high. I knew that it was going all to wood. There was no sign of blossom or of fruit. I had had some experience in pruning trees before we left Salt Lake to go to Canada, as my father had a fruit farm. So I got my pruning shears and went to work on that currant bush, and I clipped it and cut it and cut it down until there was nothing left but a little clump of stumps.

And as I looked at them, I yielded to an impulse, which I often have, to talk with inanimate things and have them talk to me. It’s a ridiculous habit. It’s one I can’t overcome. As I looked at this little clump of stumps, there seemed to be a tear on each one, and I said, “What’s the matter, currant bush? What are you crying about?”

And I thought I heard that currant bush speak. It seemed to say, “How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as large as the fruit tree and the shade tree, and now you have cut me down. And all in the garden will look upon me with contempt and pity. How could you do it? I thought you were the gardener here.”

I thought I heard that from the currant bush. I thought it so much that I answered it.

I said, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. If I let you go the way you want to go, you will never amount to anything. But someday, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to think back and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.’” - Hugh B. Brown "God is the Gardener"

And here is the testimony that I love. I add my witness to this.  God is good, so very, very good!

"God is aware of you individually. He knows who you are and what you are, and, furthermore, He knows what you are capable of becoming. Be not discouraged, then, if you do not get all the things you want just when you want them. Have the courage to go on and face your life and, if necessary, reverse it to bring it into harmony with His law...  someday, when you are ripened in life, you are going to shout back across the time and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.’" 

- Hugh B. Brown "God is the Gardener"

-Alicia