Vines and Branches

It’s funny how the Lord uses even the most basic of things to teach us. Today, He enabled me to look beyond the menial and make a life lesson of it. (I am truly a McDonald). In the process of unpacking and cleaning up my apartment, I decided to clear away some dead poison ivy creeping up onto the porch. If you know anything about me, though, you will know that my projects never end where they started. After a while, I was at a bush in the front yard. At first glance, it was a healthy, beautiful bush, complete with flowers and full of leaves. Once I looked again, however, one huge problem became apparent. The bush was not living at all. It was being completely choked out by masses of kudzu slowly strangling each branch.

My first thought was to leave the azalea alone. After all, it still looked nice on the outside. No one would really know about the dead shrub behind its charming exterior, and this hedge could simply serve as a lattice to preserve and proliferate the vines. But as I began to trim the healthier, less impressive bushes, I just couldn’t let the other one go. After a while, I started to pull off just a portion of the vines, but they were much more entwined with the bush than I had expected. As I ripped off the killer kudzu, lifeless pieces of the shrub came with it. However unfortunate to destroy it, I knew this damage was the only way the bush could have any hope of survival. The parasitic plant had to be removed, and the portions of the bush going with it were just collateral damage. What’s more, these parts would never produce life again, anyways. So, by the end of all my pulling and hacking, there remained a naked, sad excuse for a once-lively azalea. Nevertheless, this bush had to be rid of its shallow, external beauty, stripped bare of the hopeless branches, and cut back to its trunk before it could ever be what it was intended to be.

Now to the lesson learned:

It’s always been fascinating to me how Jesus so often used farming/gardening concepts to illustrate kingdom truths. In the same way, the Holy Spirit used my battle with the bush to remind me of my life as a Christian. Jesus said that He is the vine (John 15:5) or, for this illustration, the roots or the trunk. The one who penned Hebrews states that we are to throw off all the things that can entangle us (i.e. worldliness, busyness, or distractions of any kind). These are the chords of kudzu. We can be tripped up by our own actions (Proverbs 5:22), others’ influences (Proverbs 22:24-25), shear curiosity (Deut. 12:30), and just being in the everyday world (Psalms 116:3-6).

Fortunately, the Father prunes us (John 15:1-3). Because He loves His children and wants us to be entirely for Him, He will rip off the parts that aren’t pleasing to Him: the parts that are slowly killing us. Often, this process takes large, unresponsive chunks of us with it. The amount of pain and loss we experience depends on how entangled we are with our sins. If we, as Christians, continue in sin or distraction, He will eventually break us. Then, we will be left naked, exposed, and bare for a season until we muster strength to regrow from our Root. Oh! How genuinely beautiful and useful we’ll be once it is finished, though!

So, let’s not become white-washed tombs or vine-draped, lifeless bushes. Don’t let sin have any foothold in your life, or before you know it, the only way to salvage a fruitful life for Christ will be through lot of loss and pain.