As a writer, or as a person, I don’t like getting pruned. Facing tribulation.

With the world in a panic over covid-19, we are all getting pruned. Limited in where we can go, what we can do, what we can wear—sometimes even what we can purchase. Facing tribulation. It stinks.

Even as a writer, pruning is required. Standard book writing advice when I started writing was to make each chapter in the book as close to 20 pages as possible. Most books were between 19 and 23 chapters. Now books feature short chapters of a few pages each, and can have 50 or more chapters.

Good authors have always researched their books before writing them, but now research is required even to make conversations flow. People nowadays use phrases copiously such as, “no worries,” “so basically,” and “right?” And teens toss in, “dope,” “lit,” “sick,” for good—and “salty,” “thirsty,” and “curve” for bad.

For me, technology is like a pair of pruning shears. First Facebook changed. Then WordPress. When I write a blog—I want to write it, insert a photo, include the link to Amazon, and publish it. I don’t want to be pruned. I don’t want to have to fight and be stretched, shaped, and chopped to figure out the new way of doing it. I don’t want to be pruned. I don’t want to face tribulation. I just want things to be simple.

Simple. No tribulation. No pruning.

A tree made me ashamed of my bad attitude about being pruned. It is a wide, tall, healthy tree working its way up to the sky. At the bottom…a large nearly horizontal stump where the limb at the bottom of the tree was sacrificed to allow the straight tree to flourish. The stump is dark and disfigured. When it was chopped off, the tree cried tears of sap. Trees don’t enjoy pruning any more than I do. But the tall healthy tree is a testimony to the power and benefit of pruning.

“And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope.” Romans 5:3