Lifeblood

“Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” (Jn 15:4)

If I am a branch of your vine, Lord, let me feel the sap flow.  Let it rise up within me as the felt conviction that you are my root and my source of life.  Let me know that your sap – your blood, flows into me and nourishes me and makes me fruitful.

Bearing fruit is not optional.  Where there is the flow of life, there will be fruit.  Where this is closed off, there can only be death and falling away.

But I do not try to force the fruits, pushing as if trying to give birth.  Instead, I let you bring them forth.  I learn to wait for the time of fruit, having patience with my pruned and naked branches, my dark and twisted limbs.  No matter how ugly I find my winter self, how unpromising, deathly, I continue to believe, hoping beyond hope, that there will again come the rising of the sap and the impossible blooming of new life.

You are the author of this impossible thing.  You are my lifeblood.