A Branchy Parable

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful...I am the vine; and you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."  - Jesus of Nazareth (John 15:1-2,5)

I am a branch and Jesus is my vine. He is the source of all my life and my strength and my energies and my courage. 

I had this picture this morning of a branch, connected to the vine of Jesus, stretching itself out and out and out - growing wherever it pleases. Then it sees (with its little branch eyes ;) ) another branch. This branch is bigger and stronger than she is and she thinks to herself, "I wonder how I can tap into that? I want to be that strong and beautiful and fruitful!". 

So this small, little branch grows her way over to the big, strong, sturdy branch and starts wrapping herself around and around and around this other branch. She thinks to herself, "Now I can grow big and strong like this branch. They will show me how!"

But it doesn't work of course. She's only gone and made herself all bent out of shape - all twisted up and tangled into the fruit and shoots of another branch just like herself. 

If she could see the bigger picture, I think she might have realized that the vine she's connected to is the greatest, strongest, most abundantly fruitful vine in the whole garden. She would have seen that she and that other branch are just small shoots off the greater vine. Compared to the vine she's already connected to, that branch over there is small and puny in comparison - and she even more so. 

The gardener isn't surprised when he comes by and sees her grown all around another branch. It's all part of the process, he knows. Branches often grow where they're not meant to grow. But he'll have to cut her free if she's ever going to become the fruit baring branch he wants her to be. He takes his pruning shears and gently starts to cut her away from that other branch - so both can grow bigger still.

To that little branch, it feels like he's cutting her away from the only chance she had at learning to grow big and strong. She's a little angry at first because she doesn't understand. She doesn't see that all her life and all her energy has come from her powerful, abundant vine down below. If she could see all the way back down her small branchy self, she would see that way down, at the very beginning of herself, there is a connection. 

It is where she fades into the vine. Where she and the vine become one. 

She would see that, since she first began to grow from a tiny, baby shoot - just a small thing - her vine was pressing life into her. She would see that, although she is small compared to most of the other branches around her, she is filled - absolutely brimming - with life. Everything she is and the very consistency of her being is vitality and life sent into her by the vine down below. 

The pruning hurts and she doesn't understand why she can't pull life out of another branch like she wants to. She doesn't understand why the life inside another branch will never fill her like she needs to be - like she already is - filled. She doesn't see that the only source of fruitfulness, and the only way to grow strong and beautiful and sturdy like the other branches is to just...Stay. Be. Wait. Rest. 

If she would just wait a few more days, she would start to feel herself growing stronger. The life and growth she wants so badly is even now slowly traveling up her branchy body - the vine already started sending it up before she even knew she wanted it. 

All she has to do is wait. And let her vine grow her beautiful.

"Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame...for you I wait all the day long." Psalm 25:3,5