Vine-Fruit v. Branch-Fruit

This morning, I am feeling absolutely... uninspired. Lol. In the middle of the hustle and bustle of this last semester of mine where I'm student teaching and the clock has felt far too small to hold enough time in it for all the things I need to accomplish, this blog has largely been pushed to a back burner with errant thoughts of "I'll get back to it sometime." After graduation. A.G. At this point, everything is A.G.

I had my Bible open to John 15 this morning, which is one of my favorite passages of Scripture, because it talks about gardening. I'm a terrible gardener, so when I read about gardening, it's like reading about an unfathomable mystery in some halcyon state of a utopian mountaintop where only good things can happen, and I can watch in awe.

When I read this passage, I struggled with the Holy Spirit -- who pointed me to this blog and said: Go write.

What? What shall I write? Lesson plans? Because You know that's gotta be done, Lord. I can't imagine anyone reading this blog will really want to read lesson plans, but that's what's on my mind right now.

Just write.

So, a little like Abraham (with far fewer ramifications of leaping into the unknown), I "obeyed and went, even though I did not know where I was going" (Hebrews 11:8, just a teensy bit paraphrased).

Here's that utopia I was talking about: "I am the true Vine [that's Jesus, the Son of Man, our Redeemer], and my Father is the Gardener [God the Father, Lord Almighty, Lord of Hosts]. He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit -- "

Pause there: Sometimes it's easy to read that "branch" as being activities, behaviors, thoughts, etc. that we want to get rid of. I think it's important to clarify that branch = me. You. Members of humanity.

So: "He cuts off every branch [me, you, members of humanity] that bears no fruit... [This should be incredibly sobering!], while every branch that does bear fruit [THERE'S the activities, behaviors, and thoughts that I was just talking about], He prunes [our heart's condition, y'all] so that it will be even more fruitful."

So if God the Father is the Gardener, and Jesus is the Vine, and we are the branches, we are a part of the garden. In every garden, there are weeds (a large part of the reason for my lack of gardening success). In every garden, there are types of plant rot to fight. There are pests that show up year after year. Sometimes there is drought. Or the soil isn't PH-balanced. Sometimes (in my case), walnut trees run their roots just below the only acceptable spot in the yard for a garden, and the roots poison the plants. 

A garden takes work to work. And here's a key point that John makes, in context: It's not only about maintenance; it's about growth. As branches in the Vine, we should be growing. We should not be static. Fruitless. When we miss out on that key point, we get lost in the weeds. We get lost in our anger at God: Why are you allowing this to happen, God? We point our rotting leafy ends at God and say: You made me this way, so...

And the Gardener comes along with a pair of pruning shears and snips off the gangrenous portions of our hearts. 

Y'all, lest we think that's harsh, lest we think the Good Father is only interested in a pretty garden -- He is so very full of grace, mercy, and love. But He will have His way. In Luke 13, Jesus tells the story of a fig tree that had been planted in a vineyard. The gardener "went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now, I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?' 'Sir,' the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.'"

I guess what the Holy Spirit was trying to tell me this morning (beneath my ideas for writing lesson plans, sigh) was this: We sit here watching the world on the verge of war, and we cry out Psalm 46:9 to the Lord as His promise to us, when the Lord reminds us of Isaiah 55:8-9. And no, I'm not going to type those out; get your Bible in your hands and look them up. It'll do you good. :)

We sit here watching the nations in the grip of disease and somehow make it everyone else's fault when whose fault it is isn't even the issue, but we have to blame somebody, so we escalate into a shouting match over who is right or minutely less right.

We compromise with the world, we allow ideologies of this earth to poison the words of the Spirit, and we call it social justice. But social justice apart from Biblical justice is ineffective and -- dare I say it? -- fruitless. "No branch can bear fruit by itself [fruit = the good and just and righteous things that people want to do]; it must remain in the Vine [lest we forget: that's Jesus]. Neither can you bear fruit [the kind of fruit Jesus is asking of His followers, the fruits of the Spirit: love, and joy, and peace, and patience, and kindness, and goodness, and gentleness, and faithfulness, and self-control] unless you remain in Me" (John 15:4b). 

Jesus said in John 14:23: "If anyone loves Me, he will obey My teaching [i.e. bear fruit]." He continues in John 15:13: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command." Obedience and love go hand-in-hand. Jesus loves the Father and so obeyed Him by laying down His life for us. We should love Jesus, and so obey Him by laying down our lives for others. 

Vine-fruit. NOT branch fruit. There's the difference.

It's getting windy out here on that halcyon state of a utopian mountaintop, y'all. Kinda stormy. Cloudy. Lightning flashing, some not-so-distant thunder. I'm weaving my roots as tightly as I can into the security of the Vine. I'm trusting the Gardener to prune off anything faulty that weakens my position, that keeps Vine-fruit from sprouting at the end of my branch. And I'm hunkering beneath the greenhouse shield put up by the very good Gardener. Hope you are, too.

And I guess that's what the Spirit wanted me to say today. Now I'm heading back to lesson plans and the A.G. mindset.