Walking in the woods where I came from was not an unusual pastime for a child. Even today the    
sound of twigs cracking underfoot and the smell of mulching leaves brings back memories of afternoons walking the trails of the Heldebergs with my father. Maybe it was the simplicity and beauty of the experience or perhaps it was just sharing time with someone I loved, but even today being in the words is comforting for me. Just as being at the ocean, it is easy to experience God’s presence there.

Some time ago, when the departure of a dear friend caused me great sorrow, I found comfort once again walking along the small strip of woods behind my house. As the tears streamed down my face and I cried to God about the pain of loss, I noticed the singing of the birds seemed to have changed and grown even sweeter. A small brown rabbit ran out from the underbrush and, startled by my presence, came to a screeching halt in front of me like a child being pushed out on stage during a recital. Even with my tears, I laughed out loud.

I began to feel the presence of God as I would have felt the arms of my father around my shoulders, and so I allowed all the sorrow to spill out of my heart to the breast of God. “Will you leave me, too?” I sobbed like a fearful child.

The answer came as I looked again at the woods around me and became very much aware of the broken trees and fallen branches that had been reclaimed by nature. Vines had wrapped themselves around every inch of their brokenness, often forming canopies and sheltering thickets for the animals and birds. It was difficult to see anything but the vines. It seemed as though God were saying, “Why do you worry child? You know I am the vine, you are the branches.”

Of course, I had read it and heard it a hundred times before. There had been many interpretations of its meaning, but now the words truly meant something to me. Like the vine, God holds all things together, transforming the brokenness into the life giving image of Christ.

How simple, how profound, how like God.

Christ is all that others will see if we allow him to wrap himself around our hearts and souls. But he will not do it without our invitation, without our desire to offer our hearts and souls completely to God.

“I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

Sometimes it seems God prunes us most with experiences of pain, cutting back unwanted growth with shears of suffering. When pain is most difficult, we need to remember that the most delectable fruit, the fruit of greatest nourishment, came forth from the dead and broken wood of a cross, transformed by the Vine of Love.

God will do no less with the broken pieces of our lives and our hearts – if we ask.

“Yet, over and over I find people who are living witnesses of this mystery—that by opening their heart to pain, they also opened it to love, and so, found incredible peace.” Antoinette Bosco