Fruit of the Cross

When most people think of vineyards, they recall lush leaves that nearly span their palm and heavy clusters of bursting grapes, dark and ready for winemaking and, indeed, in late summer and early fall, right before harvest, it does look like that. In winter, though, the vineyard looks stark and bare. Vines stand out black against the snow and the branches that held last year's harvest poke out useless in all directions.

Beginning in January or February, the orchardmen begin to prune. All the branches that grew out randomly during the previous season come off and all they leave are the main stems: one that comes up straight and true from the ground and two in either direction perpendicular from it, trained to their supports. After pruning and before new sprouts come in spring, each vine looks like a gnarled T, too much like a trained and tortured reminder of the cross that once bore up the Son of God. Acre after acre, in perfect rows, the vineyard becomes a dim graveyard, hiding behind grim promise of a vibrant new life.

Until I could witness the yearly progress of grapevines under that hands of the orchardmen who care for them, I didn't understand God's tender imagery in the gospel:

I am the vine and 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.--John 15:5

Until I saw them, I didn't know how wildly the vines grew every year. I didn't know how useless that wild growth became once it produces only one year's fruit. I didn't know how ruthlessly the pruner removed those random growths, the same ones he planted with his own hands. I didn't know how sad the vines would look afterward: cross after cross along hundreds of rows over dozens of acres.

The Lord is indeed the vine. He told His disciples how He would save them and gave them a vivid picture by which they could see it. His cross is the source of our nurture and our sure root. Without savage pruning, no good harvest will come. Eventually, an unpruned vine will diminish unto uselessness. Only by regularly pruning back into its perfect shape will it produce the beauty and round, full fruit for which it was created.

The wine begins with the cross.

Photo credit: Weggy Winery, Muscoda, Wisconsin, 2011

Shooting in a Strange Land

Sometimes I feel like I live and battle in a foreign land. What I see, what I hear, who I meet--I feel at odds with them as I try to measure myself and everything around me against a holy God. I shouldn't be surprised, though, considering that evil still roams to and fro on the earth. It's a matter of territory, I suppose. Both as a body of believers and as individuals, we give and take territory and, like in any battle, we have to know what we are fighting for.

My biggest problem, as always, is maintaining focus. It's like the bull's eye for which shooters aim when they practice. I have to constantly remember that hitting anything outside the exact center isn't good enough. And I have plenty of examples to remind me.

They worshiped the Lord, but they also appointed all sorts of their own people to officiate for them as priests in the shrines in the high places. They worshiped the Lord, but they also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations from which they had been brought.--2Kings 17:32-33

When the Israelites were captured and resettled in Samaria, they missed the target big time. Their priest, their priests, mind you, decided that the best way to accommodate their captors and appease their God at the same time was to adapt to their new environment. They wanted to fit in, to be up to date, to understand the culture. God did not agree.

Do not worship other gods. Do not forget the covenant I have made with you and do not worship other gods. Rather, worship the Lord your God; it is He who will deliver you from the hand of all your enemies''2Kings 17:37-39

God insists that I follow Him and Him only without compromise. He doesn't do this because He is a megalomaniac. He does it out of love because He knows that no other way works. Compromise leads to idolatry. Adaptation leads to despair. It happened to the Israelites and every time I give in to what God does not condone, it happens to me.

To this day, they persist in their former practices. They neither worship the Lord nor adhere to the decrees and ordinances, the laws and commands the Lord gave the descendants of Jacob, whom He called Israel.--1Kings 17:34

I have to aim for the bull's eye, even when I am captive, even when I seem nerdy, even when I am misunderstood. I have to love my captors in the process, but my aim must remain steady. I may live in a foreign land and have to fight to maintain my territory every day, but I have no real choice. It's not only a matter of winning. It's survival. If I give in to what presses in on every side, I will look smart and agreeable, but will literally be swallowed up so slowly that I won't even notice.

So, today, I fire away, aiming for the middle, and if I miss, at least I have the target clearly in view.

Lifting the Hammer

I am crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave His life for me.--Galatians 2:20

I can't help but wonder how many crucifixions Paul saw before he wrote this. More than dozens, probably hundreds. We see crucifixion as a metaphor, but not him. He knew well their bloody agony, their slow strangling torture. His choice of crucifixion to describe the progress of his life in Christ drew purposely on one of the most vivid images he knew.

All who were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death. We were buried with Him through baptism...We know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin is done away with and we should no longer be slaves to sin.--Roman 6:3-6

Paul says that baptism crucified our body, yet our physical body did not die. I think he means instead that baptism crucifies our sin, but does not kill real flesh. So I wonder, to what degree can sin die in a body that still lives? Paul explains that, too. If I can live my life by faith in the Son of God, sin can begin to die. To whatever degree I replace my own desires, motives, and actions with Yours, sin dies.

So how do I do that? I know that sin comes from within me, from outside of me through a fallen world, and through temptation from evil. The evil I leave to You through prayer. I am in charge, however, of the sin I admit into my life through my own natural flesh and through my affection for this world. Every time I settle for less, every time I blast by Your warnings, every time I grab for what I know does not last, sin leaps up, alive and kicking.

In the end, I have to do my part exactly as You did Yours. I have to grab up the hammer and nails, lay my own admitted failures down on two stout beams, and drive in the instruments of destruction. No one will do this for me, and it will hurt. I will think it impossible. I will feel like I am dying, that nothing of me will survive. And that is Your plan. I am not fit to live in me, but You are.

May I never boast but in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world--Galatians 6:14

The Skull that Sings

My son Bryan recently gave away his bone collection. This old boxful of treasures, saved carefully for almost two decades, became the precious property of another little boy in exactly the same state of messy adventure as Bryan had been when he first accumulated it. As the new owner pondered an appropriate place to display the collection, Bryan told him that its crown, a nearly perfect cow skull, must not languish. He must hang it somewhere prominent, as Bryan had, to render its full due.

Compliantly, the young man's dad hung it high on a post in their driveway, a greeting of mixed messages to postmen and visitors alike. Then something unexpected happened. An ambitious family of wrens, looking to find a hospitable home, began carrying twigs into it. Eventually, they laid eggs and hatched little wrens there. Now, feathered parents transport food in and out of the skull, flying through the gaping eye holes, an ironic picture in their juxtaposition of old death and new life.

Today, however, I realized they also provide a metaphor for God's life in us. We are as dead in sin as that old cow skull: dry and barren of useful flesh. What pulsed constructively through us died with Adam and Eve's rebellion in Eden. As a result, we rub into eventual dust like Ezekiel's dry bones. When God breathes His Spirit into us, though, He brings life back into the husk. Like the flaps and chirps of baby wrens, He brings sound and warmth into a dead place.

Now, this is not a perfect metaphor--the skull did not rise up and speak and the wrens will eventually move out and the skull will empty again. But when I imagine how a merciful Savior filled my own sad life with a song of hope, well, the skull dwellers make the perfect picture of grace.

If Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.--Romans 8:10

Love in Midsummer

Today began perfectly--the longest day of the year stretching out like a gift. Huge hours of light that didn't press with activity. I wanted to savor this day, to celebrate summer's respite from winter's razor sharp cold and long gray. In keeping with my mood, God met me this morning with sweet serenades about His unending love and I was ready to hear it.

I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving kindness.--Jeremiah 31:3

And He has. He sang to my soul and the music became a duet. I languished in His arms. The day promised to unfold in gentle sweetness. Then I went to make a phone call. In one quick moment, He reminded me that His love is not designed to be one-sided. He expects the same out of me. That's where the day began to break down.

One short conversation reminded me I couldn't do it. I wanted to, I really did, but I don't know how to love like God. Faced with what sounded to me like selfish tears, I could only think that a person distraught enough to cry does not necessarily have good reason. Crying does not make one right. In fact, in this case, she seemed almost certainly wrong. I cared about her, but not enough to soothe her. The decisions she was making promised only a train wreck.

That, in fact, was the rub. My sad friend was crying, and I kept thinking that I have to please God. Unlike my friend, He makes the way to please Him fairly straightforward. He wants me to love. "Love me, love my people", He says. But how can I do both? How can I tell my friend that she is self-destructing and still love her? God is true to Himself and still loves all His creation. Why can't I?

The only thing I know how to do is to follow His instructions in the order He gave them. Love Him first, then be as gentle with my friend as I know how. I don't think I did very well, but the love God showed me in a long day lush with promise He also shows my friend. If I behaved harshly toward her, He does not. If I can rest in His love for me, I can also rest in His love for her.

I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither present nor future nor any powers, neither height nor depth or anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.--Romans 8:38-39

Do I Look Fat in this Dress? Or...The Garments of Praise, Part 2

Yesterday, when I was writing about spiritual dressing, about how dust and sackcloth sometimes cover our spirit, and about how God holds out garments of regeneration and redemption, always our size, and perfectly beautiful, I realized that there may be more practical application for these ideas. After all, I really do stand in my closet every morning scratching my head, wondering what to put on. Something prompts me to decide what to buy and what to wear and I really do spend a lot of time and brain power on something apparently inconsequential. But is it?

I know this: I take pleasure in the heft of my wedding dress' luxurious satin; I delight in the slick, wet feel of silk; I enjoy fur's heavy promise of warmth. Through contact with them, I know fine fabric from poor. And I know that some days, I can put on liquid linen or watery silk, feeling them move on me as I turn, and thank God with a clear heart. Some days, I can't. Some days, I pass the rich colors and tactile pleasure by, pulling down old jeans or yesterday's tee shirt. Some days, I can't bear the beauty.

God gave me this body on purpose, and sin necessitates that I cover it. My body, however, houses my spirit and when I clothe the one, I am also covering the other. I am forced to see and feel outside what I know inside.

Sin is not only dust and sackcloth--it is regret and sorrow. Righteousness is not only a rich robe--it is renewal and forgiveness and rebirth. Any dress I wear in sin will make me look drab. When any color seems to bring out a sparkle in my eyes, that sparkle comes from within. My clothes do no make me; they reflect me. No fine clothes can make a dirty man clean and, if I am honest, I will not even try to put them on in that condition. No matter how beautifully I try to cover shame, its horror will show, but neither will God's glory in me be diminished by any humble covering.

Clothes look and feel awkward not as much because they don't match each other, but because they don't match who I am relative to God. Bright colors go with boldness, light with soft clarity and purity, dark with heaviness. Modest clothes show confidence, revealing clothes show insecurity. Shapelessness projects fear or doubt, a good fit ease. In the end, it is God's revelation in my heart and soul that decide my wardrobe, not so much what hangs in my closet.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God--to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.--Isaiah 61:1-3

Do I Look Fat in this Dress? Or...The Garments of Praise, Part 1

In drifting through television channels the other day, my husband landed for a moment on a commercial for Bridezilla, the reality show that showcases brides at their worst. "Now who would marry one of those women?" he wondered and indeed, they looked very un-bridelike. Not only did none of them blush or stammer about their waiting grooms, but none of them seemed at home in their extravagant dresses, either. They wore them, but like a mannikin might. The dresses were meant to accentuate a beauty they never had.

In the beginning, You made us naked. Adam and Eve didn't care about wearing anything at all. They didn't need clothes. Not only did Eden's perfect climate make them unnecessary, their intimate relationship with You made them irrelevant. You made the first man from dirt, but he walked before You without awareness of it. All that changed pretty quick. Sin forced men right back into the dust. In his horror of what he had done, man donned for the first time his apparel of shame: dust and ashes.

You did not let us wear those clothes forever, however. You called us to more. When You call us to faith, You hold up for us a robe of righteousness, a garment of praise, the clothes in which we become fit to do good works in Your name, the clothes of mercy, the crown and jewels of renewal.

So, how does all this help when I choose what to wear? It helps by remembering that You gave me a body that You knew I would have to dress every day, and that my real clothes are not the ones that hang in my closet, but they are the ones I wear when I stand before You.

I delight greatly in the Lord. My soul rejoices in my God. For He has clothed me in the garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest and as a bride adorns herself with jewels.--Isaiah 61:10

Part 2: What that means when I face my closet