The true vine

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener."John 15:1

"I am the true vine." Notice the word "true". If there is a true vine, it's because there are others that look like a vine, but aren't. Things we hang on to thinking they'll give us life: work, other people's approval, a relationship, the phone until late at night, the idea that you have to handle everything on your own.

Maybe you've spent a long time clinging to one of these. They even hold you up for a while. But they have no sap. And then the dryness comes: you made an effort, did what you could, and you still feel empty inside. If that's where you are, I want to tell you with love: it's not that you failed as a person. It's that you were hanging on the wrong trunk. And there is a way back from that.

Jesus said these words without accusing anyone. He was at the table with friends who, a few hours later, would run away in fear. And even knowing that, He offered them the safest place there is: Himself. The prophets had already compared God's people to a vineyard (Isaiah 5). Now Jesus says: the life you are looking for is in Me.

And the verse ends with rest: "my Father is the gardener". You are not alone taking care of your own plant. There is a Father who knows every one of your branches, who knows the time for rain and the time for sun. You don't need to be the trunk, or the gardener. You only need to be the branch, connected.