I had an hour before I needed to head over to the tutoring
center, so I met up with a good friend of mine for a late lunch. When I went to
leave there was an empty parking spot where I had parked. What started out as a
quick lunch with a friend turned into hours of subways, buses and walking out
to 61st Street (that’s the out in the middle of nowhere section of
Philly, if you’re unfamiliar) to get my car. Needless to say, I wasn’t able to
make it to the recreation center yesterday.
But I got to spend a lot of time with this friend, and get
into things we wouldn’t have been able to if I had left when I had intended to.
I talked about my frustrations and sadness over the number of close people in
my life who have left their faith. My uncertainty of what to do, and my own
struggle with my faith walk, now that I have lost the support and fellowship I
once had with them. She shared with me parts of her own thought process as a
girl who grew up in a Christian home, but no longer considers herself a
Christian. Parts of me recognized the good in being able to spend this extra
time with her and have these conversations. Part of me wanted to say look how
God is using this. But mostly I was tired from thinking my car was stolen, to
realizing it was towed and going who knows where to pay who knows what. I was
exhausted from confiding hard struggles, and then adding another one to the
list. Part of me wanted to find a purpose for the past four hours, but a bigger
part of me just wanted to give up and not think about any of it.
We said goodbye, and I drove over to the church for Bible
study, tired, hungry, and feeling pretty defeated. The best I could do was joke
that I ended up having a pretty expensive lunch that day. We shared prayer
requests, prayed and then dove into the lesson. Pastor Alonzo choose to speak
on John 15, the passage about Christ as the vine and us as the branches. In
light of the day, it was just another passage to me. Another passage that
wasn’t going to help me in my faith walk, that wasn’t going to tell me what to
do about all my “ex-Christian” friends. Until it did. Alonzo asked what we
thought was meant by the beginning statement of the verse 2, “Every branch in
me that does not bear fruit he takes away…” At this point my attention perked,
but my heart remained discouraged. The words “taken away” aren’t the most
encouraging. The discussion wasn’t giving me much comfort until Alonzo stepped
in and offered a new thought. He read an excerpt from the book, Secrets of
the Vine, where the author, Bruce Wilkinson, is having a conversation with
an owner of a vineyard.
“New branches have a natural tendency to trail down and grow along the
ground,” he explained. “But they don’t bear fruit down there. When branches
grow along the ground, the leaves get coated in dust. When it rains, they get
muddy and mildewed. The branch becomes sick and useless.”
“What do you do?” I asked. “Cut it
off and throw it away?”
“Oh, no!” he exclaimed. “The branch
is much too valuable for that. We go through the vineyard with a bucket of
water looking for those branches. We lift them up and wash them off.” He
demonstrated for me with dark, callused hands. “Then we wrap them around the
trellis or tie them up. Pretty soon they’re thriving.”
As he talked, I could picture
Jesus’ own hand motions when He taught in the vineyard that night. He was
showing how the Father makes sure Hs crop comes in full and sweet. When the
branches fall into the dirt, God doesn’t throw them away or abandon them. He
lifts them up, cleans them off, and helps them flourish again.
As I listened, holding back my
tears, I knew that those words would not have been as powerful to me had I not
gone through my afternoon. I knew my heart wouldn’t have been as vulnerable and
open to receive comfort, had it not been still tender to the hurt of the day. I
may have thought I had an expensive lunch when I walked in, but sitting there
last night, I knew I had gotten a cheap, safe, but powerful lesson. A gift
really.
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