Bursting With Flavor - Jewell Utt
If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit… John 15:5 NIV
A brisk walk can be more refreshing than a nap. I decided on an afternoon jaunt to wake up my brain. I started out with great intentions, feverishly breaking away from the car, only to end up on the nearest park bench.
The weather was enough to stimulate all my senses. I wondered how such a beautiful day could follow the night’s violent storm. The sky was brilliant, the air clean. The world around me was filled with activity and sound. I squinted up to view the birds in song. What I saw was the beauty of a weeping cherry in full bloom.
I noticed a gap, a void where a branch should have been and when I looked closer, a severed limb lay drying on the ground. It still had flowers and green showed at the break. Eventually it would dry up and die, being separated from its source of life.
I remembered from my childhood that our neighbor had a grapevine. It was thick, strong enough to bear the weight of every hanging cluster. Connected, those clusters developed from scrawny limbs and became branches bearing plump grapes, bursting with flavor. Other branches broke off the main vine, leaving the cluster to rot and smell.
The words of John offer a lifestyle leading to fullness we can all experience. He is the vine, the main lifeline on which we thrive. Jesus tells us to remain in Him. There and only there will we bear fruit. Abide in Him and there is life.
How similar our fragile lives could be. We have a natural void within our souls, a yearning from the core for connection. When our relationship with Christ is not right, we can’t walk in fullness of the life he offers. Sometimes the break is subtle. It begins with a small crack, increasing until finally, it snaps. We become desensitized to the things of Christ as we wander from truth and can’t produce the fruit that makes us lovely.
Remain in Christ through prayer, study, and church involvement. Grow to maturity as part of his cluster and never take your eyes off the vine … never disconnect from the very branch who gives life. Circumstances can easily draw us away. Live your daily life in abundance, with Him at the center. For apart from him we can do nothing. www.christiandevotions.us/Jewell+Utt
