Read Today's Passage
Today's reading was actually a part of a church service I was a part of this morning. I was on vacation with some friends from college, and we read through the first part of this chapter as part of a discussion on renewing our Spiritual Passion in our relationships with God. Every time I read this passage, I am struck by how little of God we picture in our minds. We blame God for things that hurt us. We think of Has someone who only does good things for us, but when things go wrong it is His fault for not keeping the painful things away from us. But here we have a picture of God as a gardener. Gardeners cut off dying or fruitless branches as part of their care for the harvest. How many times have you blamed God for something that you did not perceive as being right, but did not stop to think about whether or not you were remaining in Him in the first place? Maybe He was working to prune out something that you were not to be involved in, or to have. Or maybe Has working on you period because you were producing no fruit? How many times has He done this to me and I have missed it?
This passage reminds us once again that to follow Christ is costly, and that we will not be popular if we do follow Him. The world will indeed hate us and our message. They do not understand it. But whose attention is more important? God's? Or the World's?
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