I would love to know the hours I have logged washing and cutting grapes over the last 5 years! I have posted before about my girls' love of the fruit. Every morning I pick a few off the vine, I wash them and then cut them. My oldest daughter likes them halved while my little one still needs them quartered. Everyday I spend large chunk of time preparing this part of breakfast. One day this weeks, to my girls dismay, we were out of grapes. I had not had a chance to run to the market the day before, so they had to settle for canned pineapple. But I have to admit it was a nice break not to stand there and cut, cut, and cut some more!!!
There are so many Bible lessons that can be taught concerning the grape. I think of the garden of Eden and all the wonderful fruits it must have had. I know the grapes there were super sweet! The air was so fresh and filled with all those yummy, fruity smells. I think of the promised land. I remember as a little girl imagining those giant grape clusters that were brought out of the promised land. (Num 13:23) It took two men to carry the cluster. Those were some good grapes I am sure!
My girls have such pickiness when it comes to grapes. They definitely like the purple grapes instead of green. They prefer for them to be seedless. And most importantly, as I have told you before, they cannot be "squishy". Something about a super soft inside makes both of my girls spit them back out. So, as I cut the grapes when a 'squishy" grape is discovered, I either pop it in my mouth, save it for dad, or in the trash it goes. It can be the best looking grape ever, but the inside of the fruit is what counts!
How do grapes get squishy? The most squishy grapes are those found at the bottom of the bag. Those grapes have been separated from the cluster. They have nothing keeping them with the group. They are disconnected!
These grapes do not have the life source of the vine or the company of other grapes. They are slowly becoming yucky inside. Now if the grape has just become detached, there is still a chance it is edible. But if it has been alone for too long, it can be really, really squishy and there is no chance anybody wants it!
When I cut into a squishy grape only one passage comes to mind, John 15:1-5 " I AM the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you, As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing."
Alone at the bottom of the bag, disconnect and getting squishy...that is what happens to us as Christians when we put God on the backburner. When He is not number One in our lives. When we are not spending time with Him praying and reading His Word. When we are not actively attending church and fellow-shipping with other believers. We are becoming mushy inside when we disconnect, just like that squishy grape.
Unlike that grape, we can be reconnected with The Vine. We can never stick that grape back on. That squishy grape can never be restored. But oh how thankful I am that we can be restored when we have disconnected.
Today's Verse
""Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;" 2 Cor 3:5
Our sufficiency is of God and without Him we can do nothing. Words to hide in our heart and remember always. Re-connection is possible, we just have to ask!
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