The heart of the Christian Community is the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the vine; we are the branches. Living within the vine, we “will produce abundantly.” Separated from the vine, we are a “withered, rejected branch which can do nothing.”
The branches of a vine have an intimate relationship with the vine, depending on it at all times and forming one living organism with it. Jesus tells his followers that he is the true vine, the real vine, and that they are the branches, whose task is to bear fruit by sharing his life. If Jesus is the vine, we are summoned to abide, to live, to make our home in him.
There is a hard saying in Jesus’ words to us today: “He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. The key word here is “prune.” I am not much into horticulture, so I looked up this word in my Random House Dictionary of the English Language, College Edition and it told me that the verb means, “to remove anything considered superfluous or undesirable.” “He prunes so that it bears much fruit….”
We are seduced by this world to achievements at all costs, to success, to good appearances – these, according to the world, give us and our lives meaning and value.
As we follow Jesus and come to know him personally, we find him calling us to submit to the pruning knife, to cut some things from our lives that are good in themselves and that would even have had the potential to develop into fruit-bearing branches, in order that other things may flourish. Ouch! Pruning is always a painful process. It is a form of loss or death. The vinedresser is never more intimately involved that when yielding the pruning knife!
We have our good seasons, but we have seasons too, where we lose our relationships, lose health, lose friends, lose our dreams, lose our children, lose jobs, lose prestige … But inside that place, our souls are being shaped in ways that we cannot understand but in ways that will stretch and widen them for a deeper love and happiness yet to come.
God bless! Have a wonderful week!