Without Me You Can Do Nothing

April 23, 2008

Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter

By Melanie Rigney

“I rejoiced because they said to me, ‘We will go up to the house of the Lord.’” (Psalms 122:1)

Jesus said to the disciples: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you. Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” (John 15:1-5)

Piety
Prune me, Lord, of my non-fruit-bearing branches. Help me to flourish on your live-giving vine.

Study
Today's Readings
In my thirties, I was quite the gardener. I began cautiously, for we’d never had a garden when I was a kid and I didn’t know a spade from a hoe. But my gentle, soft-spoken father-in-law found peace in his vegetable garden—peace from my complaint-filled mother-in-law, peace from his emphysema. So I went to him for advice on a beginner’s garden.

Elmer suggested I start with cucumbers and Celebrity (SELL-uh-brit-tee, as he pronounced it) tomatoes, because they’d be easy and I’d see immediate results. He was right, and after that, there was no stopping me. Within a couple years, I’d taken over close to two-thirds of the backyard with cucumbers, tomatoes (three kinds), strawberries, corn, peppers, eggplant, Jerusalem artichokes, radishes, brussels sprouts, broccoli, lettuce, zucchini, and failed attempts at blueberries, rhubarb, and asparagus.

Whenever we’d visit my in-laws, Elmer and I would trade gardening successes and failures. He was always full of excellent advice: marigolds among the tomatoes, nasturtiums among the cucumbers, dried blood to keep the critters away. Somehow, sharing this passion with Elmer also made it easier to deal with my mother-in-law’s complaints about relatives who had done her wrong in her childhood and her inability over the course of thirty years to find appropriate new living room curtains.

Elmer was a patient man and a patient gardener. I don’t remember him ever saying a cross word to his wife, or giving up on a plant ravaged by rabbits or blown sideways in a windstorm. He’d just put up caging or brace the plant and do his best to nurse it back to health. Sometimes, he didn’t succeed, but usually, the plant would bounce back under his loving care.

My father-in-law died in the late 1990s, and I left his son four years ago. Last spring, I gardened for the first time in a decade, patio tomatoes and peppers. I often thought of Elmer and of Christ as I did battle (usually losing) to keep the pigeons away from my tomato blooms. The patience the Master Gardener has with us is immeasurable. Let us be open to His pruning of our non-fruit-bearing branches, and delight with Him in the ultimate harvest.

Action

Which of your branches are in need of pruning? Greed? Pride? Insecurity? Determine three actions you can take this week with God’s help to begin cutting away that problem area.