The Vine's Real Job

I'm out there working in the garden one morning, carefully searching one vine for female flowers ready to be pollinated, tugging on another vine trying to get it loose from the fence where it shouldn't be growing at all.  One vine gets cheered on, tended carefully; the other ripped to shreds.  And it hits me.

If you're a vine, your job is to take over the world.

You might be a good vine, or you might be a bad vine, but either way, garden dominance is your one and only goal.  You want lots of flowers, lots of fruits, lots of seeds.  It's a big world, and you try to grow over it as fast as you can.

Jesus said, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.  Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit...I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing."  (John 15:1-3, 5)


So we are part of a vine, and we have a job to do, just like the watermelon vine in my garden.  Let's be sure we're attached to the true vine, and simply delight in the fast, steady growth that keeps pushing toward every unoccupied part of this world-garden we call our temporary home.  There are people who need the nourishing fruit only the true Vine can provide them.

And let's get the job done soon, so we can go to our real home, the city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.