Lessons in the Vines

When we go and give ourselves away - around the world or across the street - we not only express the Kingdom of God, but a little more of the Kingdom get's carved into our souls.

Denise Rizzo sent the following in an email and it shows again how we truly begin to understand the Kingdom as we live in it's flow and give ourselves to it. (And thanks to Jade Payne for the great pics! The first one is of Denise and her Dad, John)


My dad was awesome in finding lessons in the simpleness of pulling out vines... it was an experience that he and I will treasure of time we were able to spend together, doing something for our community and being "sent out" instead of "sitting in" and hearing what we should do...we were actually doing what we as followers of Jesus were called to do!


While we were "being the church", we felt like in some ways we were still "having church". We were finding parallels to life in what we were doing. At the Children's Advocacy Center, there was an area behind their storage building that was severely overgrown. What we didn't realize is the lesson that was behind that storage building. We started to rake and noticed that there were vines keeping us from pulling up the grass and other plants. When the single vines were pulled one by one, they were fairly easy to yank out of the ground but when the vines grew together all intertwined they were nearly impossible to remove.


We found that at every group of vines there was a huge vine that all the others stemmed from. We compared that to how Jesus is our "anchor" and that when we are rooted in Him and with others in the community we can not be defeated. By ourselves we will surely get plucked out but only when we are in a community of followers and more importantly anchored in the word of God, do we stand strong.