"I Am The Vine,..."

Friday I left you with this verse:

Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.(John 16)

This morning I offer another passage about joy.

⁹As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. ¹⁰If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.(Jn. 15)

Joy -- a soft, silent exhilaration that offers the distinct possibility of  shalom.

The love the God’s grace offers each of us is the precious gift of joy.

A love that, brings joy, can never be described as: “vanity and chasing after the wind.”

The promise of joy, peace, was brought into the world at Jesus’ birth.  Though out his ministry he taught, modeled and spoke of this most extraordinary possibility.

When we attempt to live with the love of Jesus as our goal, our core value; we just begin to be a gracious presence.

And do you know what? 

Most of the time we are not even aware of what we are doing.

It is only years later when a memory floats across our mind do we understand how God works.

Several months ago a friend said to me: “Do you know how many lives you have touched?”  The unswear “no” quickly popped into my thoughts.  Since that phone conversation I have often thought about what my friend said.  Then just last week I had a confirmation of how I apparently touch others lives.

She had lost her love of sixty some years.  He had not been well for sometime.  She had asked me to write a letter about how I knew Cal — what I knew about him — for his memorial service.  Her reaction to that letter; and the words she use about me were a wake-up in my mind.

God uses each of us to offer his grace to others.  And through the years we do that by what we do, the way we do it and the words we whisper touch others in a most profound way.

And we do not even realize it at the time.

We don’t realize it because it is God silently working in us; to touch others.

‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. ²He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit…….Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. ⁵I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing…… 12 ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.(Jn. 15)