The Vines of our lives

This past Saturday, my boys and I cut and cleared some old fallen and partially fallen trees in the “natural area” behind our house.  As we were cutting and moving old trees, we found that there were a lot of “vines” of some sort that had grown some 40-60 feet above the ground and had intertwined themselves into the branches in the trees.  In fact, some vines had moved from one tree to others, and much of the tree top canopy was not made up of tree branches and their leaves, but rather twisty vines and their leaves,

As we tried to pull the vines down, we noticed how difficult it was to get all the vines down (sometimes two of us were hanging from the vines and still couldn’t get them down).  We also noticed the vines were choking out much of the new growth in the trees, and in some trees, were actually holding up broken branches that had been dead for many months, yet hadn’t fallen to the ground because of the thick vines keeping the dead branches suspended in the air by their web-like strength. 

It was in the midst of this “father-son” activity that I realized how much “sin” in our lives had in common with the vines in our backyard.  

1)Over time, sin grows from its one root, to spread into our lives, choking out our personal growth.

2)   The end of the vines are usually very far reaching from the root, but they are still connected; so to is the sin in our lives…the longer it is allowed to continue, there is no limit to where it can go (even jumping from one person to another…just like the vine jumped from one tree to another.

3)   Some vines could be removed with little or no help…but the largest, difficult, and most intertwined (complex) vines had to be taken out with the help of others…so it is with the sins in our lives

Once the vines were removed, the whole backyard looked better.  Sunlight began to shine through the tree top canopy to the ground and surrounding areas that hadn’t seen sun in a long time.  I am sure that we can look forward to stronger trees and new vegetation in our small backyard paradise. 

I think the same is true when we seek God’s forgiveness of our sins and allow Jesus to remove our sins.  Once removed, God’s light can shine through to allow for new growth to happen in our lives, making for a stronger and beautiful human being. 

Hey, I know what, lets help each other out…in fact, LET’S DO LIFE TOGTHER