Prune my priorities

This is a phrase has been part of the week’s prayer of approach from Lectio365:

Lord, as I meditate on your word and learn from your Church, teach me what it means to “pray without ceasing” (@1 Thess. 5:17). Holy Spirit, wake me up to your constant presence and prune my priorities so I can go further in prayer-fuelled mission.

Prune is a wonderful, positive word to express trimming back our commitments and activities to strengthen that which is most likely to flower and bear fruit. The pruned activities aren’t necessarily bad, and they have grown naturally. However, pruning them gives our highest priorities more life sustaining food and light to grow even stronger. Pruning takes wisdom and experience, and sometimes, when a plant has become diseased from lack of proper care, it requires cutting back a plant almost to the ground, so that new growth can spring up from the roots and grow a new, healthy plant. It appears that the gardener has destroyed the plant, when they have actually given it a new life.