A few months ago, we students had the opportunity to thin fruit trees. Not only our own fruit trees, but the orchard of a friend.  As we found out, there were a lot of good, spiritual principles found in thinning fruit.
Each fruit tree needs to be thinned considerably. Over 3 quarters of the fruit gets picked off each tree, in the early stages of growth, so that the tree can support, and focus on the remaining fruit. This also enables the branches not to get too weighty, and break off the tree. Even though it can be stressful seeing all that fruit go to waste, a good harvest is seen in the end of the season.
The spiritual principle that I took away from this is that some things in my life need plucked out. To really focus on a small portion of my interests, skills, and talents, for a period of time. And maybe the other fruit in my life isn’t that bad, but it needs to be removed, for a time, so that the other fruit can flourish, and produce a healthy crop.
This is what we are doing here at GIT; taking time out of our lives to really focus on areas that need work, or areas that we want to produce even greater fruit. We are setting some things aside for a time, so that we can truly learn and grow. And it is all a part of being pruned and trained under Yahweh’s guidance.