Originally published on The Electric Gospel on July 24, 2014.
During the summer of 2014, The Electric Gospel featured items written by participants in the summer 2014 Devotional Writing workshop that I led. In this installment, Jenni Mickelson uses an illustration from nature to show our wandering tendencies — and our need for rootedness in Christ.
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Blowing in the Wind
by Jenni Mickelson
John 15:5-6 – “‘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. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.’”
If you find yourself on a flat slab of barren land in the western United States, you will most likely come face-to-face with the local drifter: the tumbleweed. Tumbleweed is a plant that finds its home in areas where the ground is either weathered by the natural elements or cultivated by farmers. Once the growing season passes and the tumbleweed shrivels up, though, the wind can easily pluck it out of the soil and blow it around aimlessly in the remote plains and deserts. The tumbleweed also carries with it thousands of seeds that spread about the land and will later foster a new crop of menacing weeds.
Tumbleweed, in its dry, lifeless state, is useless. It only moves, with no anchor to keep it positioned in the ground where it belongs.
We sinners are in danger of drifting like tumbleweed, alone and without purpose. Lost dreams, wrongdoings, and hardships leave us parched and cast our minds into hopeless wandering. We blow in the wind, with no root system to keep us steady, when we forsake God’s will and instead succumb to the enticing but fleeting temptations of this world, the devil, and our flesh. We foster sin’s weeds and put others at risk of flying away when we live our lives in this way.
God does not want us to roam in this manner. He yearns for us to remain secure in him. It was for this loving reason that he sent his Son Jesus into the world. Jesus brought us back to God through his perfect life, innocent death, and glorious resurrection. Thus he is and forever will be our vine, our root, to keep us firmly grounded in the Lord. When we rely solely on Christ’s redeeming love and sacrifice for our salvation, and not on ourselves, we are no longer tumbleweed but rather the sturdy branches of God’s vine, nourished and strengthened by faith.
Tumbleweed – it blows around with seemingly no purpose but simultaneously gives off the impression that it is desperately searching for something out there in the world. How grateful we can be to Jesus for giving us a purpose to live for – him!
Prayer:
Jesus, forgive me for all of the times that I forget about being rooted in you and instead turn to the unstable pleasures of this world. Plant me firmly in you and nurture me once again with the news of your everlasting love through your life, death, and resurrection. Guide me in being your witness to others rather than being the cause of their drifting away from you. Amen.
