It’s possible to suffer from runaway growth. Our lives can become unruly. We can grow a mess of shoots and leaves sprawling all over the place. Easy on the eye, pretty even, but not what we were made for. Our calling is to be simpler than that, to have the life-giving sap flow into the fruit and not the leaves. Cutting back the greenery will produce a healthier plant and a better crop. In God’s vineyard, leafy, showy branches are not the point. It is not about our possessions, our careers, our hobbies, even our relationships. Those things are usually beautiful, but sometimes they get in the way of what is truly important and rob the fruit of growth. What God is interested in is fruit