This week's gospel reading is one of my favourites, but I’m pretty sure I say that every time I write this or preach. But this one really is! From John 15, ‘I am the true vine… you are the branches… abide in me and I will abide in you’ This word ‘abide’ is repeated 6 times in just 8 verses, so it seems this is an important message to grasp!

But let’s take a step back and think about a vine or just any plant. I have shared here before my novice garden skills but it still astonishes me how much you have to cut away for a plant to bloom. I remember some years ago a special rose that my grandad gave me, was in some places, blooming and in other places… not so much! I showed my mum, who is basically Monty Don in my eyes and she said it needed a good prune. I stood back and watched on anxiously as she hacked this precious rose back to twigs. ‘What have you done mum?!’ I said, to which she said ‘wait and see.’ You’ll be pleased to know that in the months following this rose bloomed like it had never done before.

‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.’ Verses like these make sense when you think about it in the context of gardening and as I commented in my homily last Sunday, Jesus would use relatable everyday metaphors to make his point. There are seasons where it feels like pruning in our own lives is necessary. Lent is a good example of this, is there anything we can cut back on to create room for growth? But this of course isn’t confined to Lent, we may feel at different points in our journey the need to prune and cut back so that we might bloom and hear God.

As well as this intentional pruning there then can be times when perhaps we need a drastic cutting back, like my mum did to my rose. There are things we know would be good to cut off, but it’s hard for a variety of reasons. Or even, it can feel like branches have been ripped from us. There are times in life when the unimaginable happens leaving us exposed and vulnerable, like branches being ripped from us. I want to be clear, I don’t buy into the theology that God sends these as tests to us, rather, life can be incredibly tough and prune us when we don’t want it or ask for it.

In this pruning, whether we are the ones who are initiating it or not- what can we do in this hard and exposing season?

‘Abide with me’  God says.

As I said, repeated in the passage is the invitation to abide in God. To abide in something is to live, or a word I particularly like, to ‘dwell’ within. This rightly captures the image of being safely contained, of residing and inhabiting within God. This is such good news for me. This means that when I am trying to cut back in order to grow, I am never disconnected from the source, I am never left by God.

Personally, I think one of the hardest things to do when things are really tough, maybe those seasons where we feel like branches are being hacked from us, is to remain close to God. And this is for good reason, our questions of ‘why’ can cause a separation, our feeling of mistrust. However, I am reminded this week, of what it is to abide with God whatever we are facing.

A family member shared with me recently that when he had received probably the hardest news of his life, he went for a walk. On most of the walk he was ranting to God- how could you let this happen? Towards the end of the walk, he sensed God say ‘keep talking to me through all this.’ I loved this. We might want assurances that everything will be alright, we might want quick fixes and solutions. And yet what God promises us to be with us, in it all.

God is present, our challenge is to dwell and abide within God in every phase of life because the promise of new fruit is coming.