A Parable of The Jasmine Vine

Many times I’ve said that I feel nearest to God when I am in my garden.  For the next few weeks I want to share with you some of the ways He has spoken to me, using my garden as a classroom.

On the pathway that leads to my garden, I have a wrought iron, arch-shaped arbor and a fence.  Growing on that arbor and fence is some star jasmine.  It is so fragrant in the springtime when it blooms.  I wish the blooming season could last all summer, but we enjoy the beautiful, sweet, white blossoms for only a few weeks.  After the blooms have faded, the vine goes into its growing season.  It seems like the new growth appears overnight, and it must grow several inches every day.  That’s good because it makes the vine fuller and promises even more blossoms the following spring.  But it also creates a problem.  The new growth becomes unruly, shooting out vines as much as three feet long, wrapping around other plants, dangling into the pathway, generally making the walk toward the garden less than pleasant.

Every few days I must tend to the vines.  When it’s possible, I weave the new growth into the fence or the arched arbor, adding fullness to the overall growth.  But sometimes the vines are stubborn and woody making it hard to weave them into the desired structure.  And sometimes the new growth is in an area that is already full and there is no more room to weave it.  In those cases, I have to trim the vines.  You see, I have a plan for this jasmine.  My plan is to create a privacy screen on the fence and shade on the arbor.

God has a plan for you and for me, too.   “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope,” (Jeremiah 29:11).  He wants us to have a full life. “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly,” (John 10:10b).
 
But just like the vine, we tend to go off in every direction unless we yield ourselves to God’s plan for our lives.  “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death,” (Proverbs 14:12). “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths,” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

God has a way of weaving us back into His plan when we get off track, just like I have to weave my jasmine when it becomes unruly.  Sometimes He uses Scripture or our Christian friends to point out to us when we are headed in the wrong direction.  “The ear that listens to life-giving reproof will dwell among the wise.  Whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence,” (Proverbs 15:31-32).  When we listen to His instructions, even if we have strayed from His plan for us, He mercifully weaves us back into the pattern of life that is pleasing to Him.

If we refuse His instruction we will face His anger, and our future is death.  That is when people face the danger of being pruned out of the vine.  “They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers, who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies,” (Judges 2:13-14).  “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind,” (Ephesians 2:1-3).

But when we listen to Him, and when we agree with Him that His way is the only way, He forgives us and, once again, He weaves the branches of our lives into His perfect plan.  “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin,” (Psalm 51:1-2)!  “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.  For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them,” (Ephesians 2:4-10).

That is why God tells us, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it,” (Proverbs 22:6).  Just like I am “training” the vine to go where I want it to go, we are taught to “train” our children.  We need to teach them, beginning the day they are born, that God loves them, He has a plan for them, that His way is the way of abundant life, and any other way leads to destruction.  That does not mean that our children will always do the right thing and make the right choices.  We all get off track sometimes.  But when we train our children, and ourselves, to submit to His plan for our lives, the end result will be a life that is full and that glorifies Him.  And the ultimate result is a life with Him in eternity.

Just as I expect my jasmine to conform to my plan for it, my prayer for you and for me this week is that our hearts and our desires will be transformed by God and that our lives will be conformed to His perfect plan for us:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect,” (Romans 12:2).

All Scripture references are from the English Standard Version.