Monday
I Hate Vines
“At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail.
Job 14:7
Sounds silly huh? To hate a vine = crazy. Let me explain; where we live there are a lot of trees, we have forest all around us. When we first moved here almost fourteen years ago, I noticed something right away: The vines were overtaking the trees, killing them slowly, methodically and in some cases thoroughly.
The process is painfully slow and in the beginning, I’m sure the tree doesn’t even know what is happening. It all seems so wonderful and the vines seem to actually be supporting the tree, helping it in some way. But when the tree and vine are completely and totally dependent on each other, then the vine takes over and destroy it, little by little.
By the time the vine is ready to obliterate the once beautiful tree, it is so entwined in the branches, woven around and around and around each sprout, that it seems impossible that the two plants were once separate. It becomes difficult to tell which is which. The interdependency is so absolute, it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.
It starts with one small little branch that falls off from the weight of the vine, after that, a much la rger supporting branch crashes to the ground in defeat. Pretty soon, the la rge stunning tree can’t take the multiple breaks and painful entrapment enforced by the vines. It falls completely to the ground, dead.
The vines = our sin. The tree = us. Where do we get our hope?
Lord, please help me to recognize the sin in my life even when it is disguised as something that will possibly help me. Please Lord, I don’t want this sin to kill me, I need hope
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