The Vine

Why can’t my soul find rest? Why do the questions keep coming? There is the steady question of who I am and what I am meant for. There is the question of what people think of me; do they approve, do they see me, do they look right past me without pause? Oh, the pride with which one must deal as the questions of significance and purpose flood the soul! The pride of the very question, “do they see me?” is astounding. It’s as if the entire world must revolve around my life, my purpose, my feelings, my path or I have no value. To even say it is nauseating! How can a person think such thoughts?

Is there any connection to the mind of Christ in me at all? No thought would ever have crossed the Son of God’s mind; His every thought from birth was for others and how he could serve them. John the Baptist nearly refused to baptize his cousin, but Jesus insisted. John new it was time for Jesus to take center stage (I must decrease and Jesus increase he said), but Jesus insisted that the messenger deliver the message! Jesus didn’t walk up to John and stand there until he killed the fatted calf and brought out the barrels of wine; he waded into the water with him and humbled himself to be washed by Elijah.

Is that the key? Humility? How does one find such humility? How do the internal struggles cease and become outward signs, fruit, of the life in Christ? Jesus said we must remain in Him. An active verb that seems to be passive at first, but a passive verb is one where the subject is being acted upon, not where the subject is passive in the sentence. So, remaining in, abiding in, enduring in, living in, staying in, persevering in, or continuing in Christ is active in both the English and Greek languages and in practice. I must act to abide in Christ. He, almost promisingly says, I abide in you. Not I will abide in you, but, due to the fact that we are already clean because of the word spoken to us, He abides in us. It is a statement of truth, of fact, and so, being it is Jesus, it is as good as a promise; we can count on the fact that he abides in us. And, if we abide in him, we will bear much fruit. The picture is clear. The branch is intrinsically the vine, there is no distinction between the two as long as the connection remains. Once separated the divergence is obvious. The branch ceases to be what the vine is, it can neither give nor bear life, it cannot sustain its life nor the life of anything that would have grown from it were it connected to the vine. The life that flowed so powerfully and naturally from the vine is lost, it is absent, it is no longer with the branch because it never was with the branch it was always and only with the vine.

The fruit of my thoughts disconnected from the vine (Jesus) are of my own, they are neither life producing nor life giving, I cannot produce life in and of myself. My thoughts turn to myself therefore and only of myself when I remove myself from the life producing essence of Jesus. He hasn’t removed himself from me, yet I have distanced myself from him and his creative powers. Humility in light of this is to understand, realize, admit, that life giving and life producing thought and action comes only from the connection Jesus willingly offers to us. It’s as if he is taking us by the shoulder, wading out into the water with us, looking us in the eye and saying, “If I can humble myself to the point of the cross, surely you can humble yourself to stay connected to me and not try to do this thing on your own.” 

See John 15