I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. He cuts off every branch of me that doesn't bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more.
You are already pruned back by the message I have spoken. Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can't bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine,
you can't bear fruit unless you are joined with me. John 15:1-4 The Message.
The life of the Vine is "not of pleasure nor of ease." Almost before the flower fades the fruit begins to grow, but instead of being allowed to grow where it will, it is tied immediately to a stake, forced to draw out of the hard hillside its nourishment. When "the fair shoots begin to wind and wave in the blue air, and feel how sweet it is," along comes the gardener with pruning hooks and shears, "and strips it bare of all its innocent pride...and cuts deep and sure, unsparing for its tenderness and joy."
When the vine bends low with the weight of the grapes,"wrought out of the long striving of its heart." But ah! The hands are ready to tear down the treasures of the grapes; the feet are there to tread them in the wine-press "until the blood-red rivers of the wine run over, and the land is full of joy. But the vine standeth stripped and desolate, having given all, and now its own dark time is come, and no man payeth back to it the comfort and the glory of its gift." Winter comes, and the vine is cut back to the very stem, "despoiled, disfigured, left a leafless stock, alone through all the dark days that shall come."
While the vine undergoes this death, the wine it has produced is gladdening the heart of man ~ Ugo Bassi
The gift of love is the outpouring of self. The fruit of sacrifice produces life. As we grapple with this, God is at work in our lives; pruning us, moulding us into what we can really be simply because it is good.
Shalom,
Sv ".+
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