Healthy Branches

 We have a type of palm tree on our property at the coast. It adds a lovely, exotic look to the place, and had grown quite tall. A couple of summers ago it started to die. The fronds turned brown and eventually only a few, small green fronds remained down at the bottom. So, we cut it off just above the little green sprouts, hoping maybe something would survive. We found that the insides of the tree had rotted and was all pulpy.  We’ve been having drought conditions, so that may have added to the issues, but a major portion of the tree had definitely died.

Still, beneath that rot there grew some healthy fronds, and since removal of the dead portion, they have kept growing into a fine, strong (though smaller) palm tree. Once the rotted portions had been removed, the tree began to flourish again. We had cut the “cancer” out.  Even more surprising, one of the tall, chopped down portions of the dead tree began to sprout new growth along the bottom. My husband trimmed it down and then planted the growing end, and a year later it’s still growing!

Cutting away the bad allowed the good, healthy portion of the tree to survive. We’ve seen it before with plants where we’ve cut off dead or withered branches, the rest of the plant begins to thrive. Living portions of trees and bushes are pruned to encourage fuller growth. Even drastic “prune” jobs, like the palm, and like several trees we lost during a severe ice storm, seem not so lost. Growth comes out of the stump, because there is still life present.

The view of Christians as branches on a Vine reads into this idea of pruning and cutting to encourage healthier and more productive growth. Most of us probably don’t want to think about that. Once we become Christians we like to think we are OK, set. And, in one way we are; Christ in us gives us eternal life. However, our productivity in life this side of heaven presents the issue of needing our branch to be tended. We carry a lot of stuff that needs pruning away for us to be the best we can.

John 15 begins “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful…No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (:1-5) The passage also says that those branches that continue to not bear fruit are cut off from the vine. “If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burn.” (6)

Fruitless branches are not worth much in a vineyard. Sometimes they can damage the rest of the tree because they are diseased. The life-force from the tree obviously isn’t running through a diseased or dead branch.

Now I don’t believe this metaphor is teaching us that if we don’t bear fruit we will lose our salvation. That isn’t possible. We did nothing to earn our salvation, so we can do nothing to lose it. However, if after salvation, our purpose is to stay connected to the vine and bear fruit – perhaps we are of no earthly use anymore if we stop bearing fruit. We are still branches, but useful only as fuel on a fire. The point is, we want to be useful, fulfilling God’s purpose for our life. We are supposed to be bearing fruit, and we can only do that when connected to the life-source.

My concern shouldn’t be on whether I’m useful or not, it’s whether I am connected. The rest follows naturally. I can know I am connected if I am allowing God’s Spirit to be active in me. If I am connected I will be bearing the Spirit’s fruit. That’s what it means to “remain in Him”. Sin breaks the connection. But, as I’ve written about before, unlike a vine in our garden, branches belonging to Christ can be reconnected. We do that by confessing whatever it was that took us away in the first place, and restoring the communication, the connection. That opens us up to be filled with the Spirit and bear fruit. Probably this is a daily, if not hourly quest – to stay filled with the Spirit. And to make confession a habit.

Again, this isn’t about our salvation. This is about what we do with our lives from our conversion until we enter heaven. We have work to do. Some of that work is becoming more Christ-like, so the Fruit of the Spirit.  Some of the fruit is bearing witness to others about Christ in our life. And fruit comes as we work in concert with the Spirit’s leading in our life. The Spirit can only lead when we are connected to Him.

There was life in my palm tree. You couldn’t see the extent of that life until the dead portions were pruned away. Once free of the poison the tree once again began to grow and flourish. The longer we allow sin to rule in our life, the more rotten our branch becomes, eventually requiring severe pruning to restore health. We can choose to allow our branch to totally fall away and be unfed by the vine. We can choose to let sin rule in our life, but if we have truly invited Christ into our life, why would we?  James, in his book, questions if a true believer could have a totally fruitless life. Why would I give my life to Christ only to live like I never knew Him?

We need to learn to keep a short account of sin in our life. We probably sin every day, several times a day, but need to develop an awareness of that so we can quickly stop and confess and get back on track. When we confess, we put the Holy Spirit back in charge, where He belongs. When we sin, we take back the power and try to live our lives without Him. Though we never stop sinning in this lifetime, we can learn to do it less and quickly confess when we do sin. That practice keeps us connected to the vine and living our life as God wants us to live.

My little palm tree makes me smile. It is obviously well connected to its source, and very healthy. I want to be like that in my relationship with the Living Vine, Jesus Christ. I want my branch to be healthy and fruitful, even if it means that some stuff will just need to be pruned away.