Being a Branch

I feel like I've returned to Christian Kindergarten. Remember Kindergarten? It was the place where you're supposed to learn the basics.

Hold your pencil with your thumb, second and third finger.

Color neatly.

Share when you're in the housekeeping center.

Share everywhere you go.

Raise your hand and use your indoor voice when you have something to say.

Close the door when you go to the potty.

Important stuff like that.

In Christian Kindergarten there are two basics. God loves you. You can't save yourself, but His grace can and it's enough.

How can I possibly be into my 33rd year of loving Jesus and need to relearn these simple truths? Because I never really "got" them to begin with. In her new book Grace for the Good Girl, Emily Freeman says, "Somewhere along the way, I got the message that salvation is by faith alone but anything after that is faith plus my hard work and sweet disposition. I lived most of my life under a system I designed for myself and I labeled it The Gospel."

How DID that girl crawl into my head?

Along the way, I became a human-doing instead of a human-being. A human-being is someone who is saved by Grace, rests in that grace and revels in God's love. All doing flows out of that rest and reveling. A human-doing is someone who is saved by Grace but often then ignores the gift she's been given and begins working like crazy as if it's something to be earned. All her doing comes out of a desire to perform in order to earn something with which she's already been lavished--God's love.

So I've been back at the beginning, relearning some basics. I've learned a lot in the years since I prayed for Jesus' grace as a 10-year-old girl laying alone in her bed, but all of it is nothing if I miss love and grace. Nothing. The funny thing is that it's still my temptation to try to work hard at learning it. Ha! God is forcing me to learn it slowly as He unfolds it to me. I'm learning to rest even in the grasping.

This morning in reading John I got a fresh glimpse of where I'm being led. John 15:5 ,9 say, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing....As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love."

I am loved by Jesus in the same way, in the same amount, in the same lavishness as Jesus is loved by the Father. Now that is amazing, life-altering news if I can start to wrap my mind and heart around it. By just remaining in relationship with Him, being a branch, I will produce the fruit that my heart longs to produce. No work, no effort, no striving can produce that fruit. Only abiding. Only grace. Only love.

I think I'm on my way to being a branch...and a human-being.