Good morning…
Today is a new day. The sins of yesterday need not expand into the sins of today. Ugly thoughts. Biting words. Selfish deeds. Together with God, we can nip these painful buds right off our branch, letting them fall to the ground, to become humbling hummus for the soil beneath our feet. As we allow our attention to travel from the troubled tentacles at our tips, back down beneath our bark on hidden veins of prayer, we secure our focus where our branch meets God’s Vine.
The ugly thoughts, biting words, and selfish deeds of others do not grow on our branch. They are not our buds to tend. We, however, are encouraged by God to care for the health of the branch that is ours.
Traveling under the rough bark of our branch, we are drawn back to our Vine, our Trunk, our Source. Resting our focus where our God meets us personally, keeping our attention where our God comforts us continually, and remaining bonded where our God nourishes us now and forever, the buds of God’s Holy Spirit organically appear on our branch in the exact same spot where our prickly human nature popped through, causing pain.
Empowered by the strength of God’s indwelling Spirit, we nip our unsightly buds, we let go of self-criticism, and we nestle back into the constant care of our life-giving Vine. Embodying the grace of our one-on-Oneness, we witness God’s growth blooming on our branch day by day.
“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. I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing” (John 15:4-5, MSG).
…Sue…
