Encouragement

A Branch Attached To Your Vine

by Maria Franco
06/24/24
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We always call God, "Abba Father" who is our Father in heaven and on earth.
He gives us our daily bread. He laid down his life for us. He is the Shepherd. He is the life bearer. He is our Provider. He is the beginning and the end of all things for all things exist through him.
But if we read the passages of the Bible carefully there are many instances where the love of God is depicted to the love of a mother.

We read in Psalms 49:15, "Does a mother forget her baby or a woman the child within her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you."
Jesus also wept over Jerusalem knowing their rejection of him and his prophets. He once remarked in Matthew 23:37; "How I have longed to gather your children together like a hen gathers her chickens under her wings."
The love of a mother is a special love.  Jesus himself had a mother with the purest and most loving heart. And he gave us his mother from the cross to be the mother of us all. His mother never left his side from the moment of his arrest until she laid him herself in his tomb.

We are all conferred with our baptismal rights as sons and daughters of God, as joint heirs in the kingdom of God.
Jesus being the Vine and we a branch attached to him. For without him, we cannot survive, we will end up as withered branches of no use.
This is clearly stated by St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians 1: 4-5; "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will."

We see around us today many adoptions taking place. A noble gesture on the part of childless parents!
It is indeed a moment of great joy as the child will be indeed fortunate to have an upbringing in a good family lacking nothing in life in terms of comfort, love and the stability of home.
Maybe a new born adopted child would perhaps miss the feel and voice of the biological mother in whose womb the child had grown. Of course, there is normally not much information about the mother and her reasons for leaving her baby at the orphanage and abandoning the child but at this tender age the child would definitely long for the mother's touch.
With time, the child gets used to the adopted parents hearing their voices and seeing them daily but just out of the womb, a baby would seek and search for the mother's warmth after confinement in her womb.
Though hats off to the adopted parents who take in a child to provide and give all their love for the rest of life!
The branch now gets attached to the Vine which will provide for life after being separated from the Vine that conceived life.

Something similar happens to us all. God having knitted us together in our mother's womb and seeing us grow in secret, for our form is designed by him, we cannot break away from our main creator. Our parents take on the role assigned to them by God as co-creators and will provide for us physically and in material ways but in order for our soul to live, we must be attached to the Vine.
Psalm 22: 10 says, "From birth I was cast on you; from my mother's womb you have been my God." and in Psalm 27:10, "Though my mother and father forsake me, the Lord will receive me."

May we always remain joined to the head who is Christ, who is the living truth, who is our source of life. Attached to him in this life and the next to come forever and ever.

Maria Franco