YOU, HE SAID, ARE THE BRANCH
The illustration has been repeated since Jesus first gave it, and rightly so. The lesson became a bit more personal, however I have not yet completely understood why God showed it to me... what does it mean to me personally?
While in Germany, between speaking appointments, I stayed a 2 days in a small town on the edge of the Black Forest. My second morning there I took a walk, intentionally to be alone with God.
I climbed a small mountain overlooking the city where a catholic chapel was. On one side were rows of grape vines in perfect order, really this was the most uniform, at attention, vineyard I have encountered.
On my descent I was musing over how so much of the vine had to be pruned away in order for such success. My rough guess was about 85% of what could come from the trunk was discarded. A knee-jerk reaction is that the more vine you have coming from the trunk the better. I guess that is not true. While still considering this, I actually encountered the vine master. He was methodically working his way up the mountain side stopping at each vine... not to trim the branches... but to actually cut almost a third of the yet green fruit off. I stood speechless for a moment. I am not so ignorant as to not see any benefit in this... but what took my wind away, was that I was in the midst of a conversation with God about how He wanted to prune so much of me. And then just like that the vinedresser shows up and begins cutting the fruit.
Okay, I can fathom pruning me as the branch, but to intentionally cut some of my fruit off. So I get pruned to bear more fruit and then God cuts some of that off so that I can... what?! Of one thing I am certain, this is a road called faith.
posted by holamickey | 7:49 PM
6 Comments:
Interesting last paragraph.
Your pictures brought back memories of a hill overlooking the English countryside to which I retreated several times on my recent trip when I needed to sort out some things with God. There is something about prayer walks that helps me hear God's voice. Sometimes the answer is unmistakably clear. Other times, as it apparently was in our case, the full explanation comes later. It is a lesson in learning to trust His heart!
Wow, that last paragraph was a mind stretcher. Ron and I discussed what it would mean spiritually. Cutting off part of the fruit allows the nutrients to feed the left on fruit to achieve larger, sweeter, juicier, and plumper grapes. May be the fruit which we redeem as good and useful is really holding us back from perfecting the fruit God desires. Cinda
Makes me think of Heb. 12:1. Paul seems to differentiate between sins and what he calls "weights". I have often thought that in the Christian walk there are things in our lives that are weights. They are things that may not be inherently bad (and may even be "good" in their own right) but they tend to slow us down as we run the Christian race. Maybe the vine dresser knows that the added fruit will suck some of the life from the other fruit and will be those "weights" to the overall health of the vine and the leftover grapes.
If I may go for a second round, I think a combination of Cinda's and Autumn's comments flesh it out well (for lack of a better phrase as my brain shuts off). There are weights in our lives (could be our favorite past time, another activity, interest, pursuit that are totally legit) that hinder our relationship with God which in turn reduces the quality of the fruit we produce. It sucks our time, energy, ability away from that which should be receiving the best of our time, energy, ability.
This is getting long, but I also think this could apply to people too. I want to be careful with this as I'm not inferring predestination. EGW does have a vision given in Christian Service ch. 3 (p46?) about picking berries (An Impressive Dream). I once knew a pastor who was of the view that if people weren't serious after a series of studies he wouldn't waste his time continuing. I've stuggled with that view at times, but (and I'm not totally agreeing with that) if the fruit isn't ready (let alone responsive) it is a waste of vital nutrients for the branch to keep sending nutrients to that fruit (this is thinking on an individual basis for both branch and fruit as that fruit might later ripen in connection with another branch).
Hmmm...I decided I wasn't going to read ur blog until you read & comment on mine!! :P After all, it was per ur request for crying out loud!!!
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