One Vine
One of the sites we visited last week with our daughter Bethany and her family was New Harmony, Indiana. One stop on our tour was this historic house.
Its entrance is at the end of an arbor. Notice the beautiful grapevine that covers the arbor.
I didn’t leave off the s. That noun grapevine really is singular. This beautiful arbor is covered by the branches of one, and only one, plant — one grapevine. The arbor is at least forty feet long and about eight feet wide. The one vine covers both sides and the top.
I would love to see that grapevine when the grapes are ripe. The heart desire of every Christian mother is that her children be prolific fruit-bearing branches of the one true Vine now and forever.
I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.
Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit,
He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit,
He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.
You are already clean because of the word
which I have spoken to you.
Abide in Me, and I in you.
As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself
unless it abides in the vine,
so neither can you unless you abide in Me.
I am the vine, you are the branches;
he who abides in Me and I in him,
he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
John 15:1-5