For whatever reason this morning, I was led to sit down and chew on John 15 for a short bit in my quiet time.  This is a chapter in John in which Jesus is addressing his disciples after they have just ate their last Passover meal together, he has watched their feet, and he has pointed out one would betray him, and one would deny him.  In a short time, he is headed to die on a cross.  And in this moment noted in the passage, he says “The Father is the gardener, I am the vine, and you are the branches.  Stay connected to me.”

Some days it is hard to know what this should look like, this “remaining in Him” which keeps us plugged in to Jesus, and his Father’s will.  Usually when I wake up each day, worries related to the day explode in my mind, followed by thoughts and feelings of loneliness as a single person that I try to push back , and then I hear the Spirit asking me to come spend time with him.  But the day- I must prepare for the day!  And this preparation usually has less to do with being organized and steeled for coming concerns.  Sometimes it is wandering outside of Jerusalem to find and drink from brackish pools, whose water is poisoned by yesterday’s losses and longings.  Sometimes it chasing a flight of fancy within, in which what I pursue turns out to be nothing more than shadows on the wall.  More often than not, those important things I think I need to take care of each morning are immaterial and insignificant to real life, and I leave God standing by.  I don’t know why I choose to consort with fountains of grief, or choose to chase lust instead of love.

Except that I realize I am often a man living with his head cut off.  Or rather, his heart cut off.  I have let myself be cut off from the vine, from the leading of Love.

Fortunately, God is faithful, and in the story Jesus tells, which is a story of warning, we can be pruned off fully from the vine when at some point God judges us and we are found lacking- lacking in connection to his heart, and in connection to his Spirit.  In our day-to-day battles, though, he doesn’t cast us out and throw us away for each of our connective failures.  He just  prods us to come back and remain in him.

I cut myself off from the vine and spurn the living water Christ offers me because I have either forgotten who Jesus is, or I have never quite learned it.  Jesus called himself “the life”, and “the vine” from which every branch subsists.  I cut myself off because I let myself believe otherwise about him.

“I am the vine; 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… If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” John 15:5,7

The struggle in Christian living is simply to “remain in him”.  Let us test him, and remain in him, and look to see what fruit he bears in our lives, and how he answers our prayers.