Today I had the pleasure to work in lovely Maynardville, Tennessee. Ah, yes. I feel like I should wear a smoking jacket and puff on a pipe when I think of it.
If you've ever paid attention (not that you would), some telephone poles have guide wires that extend from the top to the ground, diagonally. Their purpose is to provide support for the pole because the cables are under extreme tension (roughly 3000 pounds of tension). They are technically called "down-guys." Don't say I never enlightened you.
So today, we worked a pole that had eight guys on it. Four would be considered alot of guying, by the way. But being in lovely Maynardville, Tennessee, the pole stood in an overgrown area. Before I could begin replacing the down-guys I had to deal with the jungle of vines that had grown all the way up them.
So I grabbed the machete. We keep it fairly sharp for just such an occasion. I started hacking away at these vines, careful to maintain physical integrity to my limbs. I actually nicked my ear once which stopped my heartbeat until I gained the courage to reach up and make sure it was still attached. It was.
Anyway, I swung and hacked and chopped and sweated and bludgeoned and just about every other verb you can imagine for nearly 45 minutes. Vines are tough, y'all. But I couldn't help but think of John 15. Not kidding, when I first saw all those vines and how they were wound around the down-guys, this is the first thing that came to mind.
As I tried to remove them and fought against their strangle hold, I thought about how Jesus said that He is the True Vine. These weren't grapevines that I was dealing with and there were no branches shooting off of them, but I couldn't help but marvel at how strongly they clung to the wires. They were twisted and laced all through them, nearly making the down-guy itself hidden in the vine.
I wonder how easily it is for us to be separated from our Vine. I wonder if we are nearly hidden from view because Christ is wound and twisted and laced all throughout us, making us invisible to the one with the machete. When the world comes at us, machete bared, to try and hack away the Vine and expose us, are we easily divided from Christ? Or have we allowed Him to gain such a strangle hold on our lives that the world drops their machete and walks away disgusted and frustrated?
Just some thinking from me, but I hope we all cling to the Vine as tightly as He clings to us.
