Oct.28 – “Vine Living”
Soon and very soon, this blog will be finding itself on a new address, at my own website called, gratuitously, www.robertbaddeley.com, which will be your one stop online shopping place for all things “rob”. Like you care! 
But, what I wanted you to notice eventually was my catchy byline at the top of that page, which I agonized for MINUTES over! I decided on “life on the vine, living abundantly amidst the hoo-haa”. This awkward little phrase contains a lot of what I am and consider important, so I thought I’d blog it a bit and work it out with y’all.
I’ve always really been drawn to the passage in John 15:1-7 used by Rich Brown in church last week. It never fails to impress me when I read the words of Jesus that say, “I am the vine; you are the branches”. There is a very real, very necessary connection between us and Jesus if we are in any way to be fruitful, or good for anything, in this life. I say this having spent LONG periods in my trying to do very nice, very Christian things without much thought of Jesus at all. It honestly makes me wonder what He thought, actually. Was he smiling? Crying? Shaking his head? Or just waiting? Good questions I guess, but regardless, it was through the persistent efforts of a close friend and pastor of mine, James Downing who impressed upon me the absolute necessity and vitality of keeping Jesus and that relationship at the core of my experience and ministry. I know a lot of seminarians, a lot of people with a lot of initials behind their names, who for some reason forgot this.
I say all this for a couple reasons. I know lots of teens who think being a Christian is about joining a club or getting the manual. It’s neither. It’s more like getting married. You enter into a very REAL and very close relationship, that being Jesus. Now, it may be said that with this marriage, you enter into His extended family, the body of Christ, his church. I guess that may be the ‘club’ feel some think of. You also become attached to the communication that Jesus gives us through His word. I guess this may be the ‘manual for living’ that some think of. But do you see the difference? Without the relationship, the club is boring and the manual irrelevant. You just won’t appreciate or get those things without Him at the center. Believe me, its been tried. It’s being tried by many teens I know and love right now.
He is the vine – You are the branches. Apart from Him, YOU CAN DO NOTHING.
A little eery sounding, but the opposite is also true. With Him, what can’t you do? I mean, he did create the whole known universe.
So, I make it my goal to live by the vine. Not like Tarzan, swing around, although it feels like that a bit. But just making sure that my connection to the fine stays strong. Basically, I’m all about the fruit!
more later, but sound off – I’d like to hear it
coram deo
rob
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I love this passage too. Although, in Christ Group, our discussion got pretty interesting, as we starting talking about what it means to have the dead branches cut off. Ouch! It made us stop and think about the fruit in our lives – at least I hope it did. That was a question I had to walk away with: am I bearing any fruit? I mean, truly, if I’m ‘remaining in the vine’, then my fruit should look like Jesus, right?
I learned of this many years ago at my old church and it’s always stuck with me, one of those things that is constantly there to remind me that I need to only have those “branches” on me that will bear fruit and are GOOD. Dead branches do nothing except harm to the whole plant.
I admit that sometimes it is hard for me to accept that I CAN’T do everything alone. I honestly dislike muchly (hate is a strong word
) asking for help and realizing that there are things I can’t do alone and that irks me sometimes. But on the other hand, it is a nice feeling, knowing that there truly is someone who will look out for me and pull me back to my feet when I fall. It’s really nice that there is someone who I can have absolute dependency on and that through him I can do ANYTHING! =D
Kathy, what else was the question about this passage that we talked about at Christ group? Was it who were considered branches on His vine? Or who was the dead branches on His vine? Of if people can be dead branches on OUR vines? I can’t remember what it was exactly, but it was something that caught my mind then and now it’s almost gone :*( Any idea?