Make sure you are attached to the right vine. Simply put: be close to God. Let all spring from Him (this coming Spring, and always).

An author named Max Lucado once pointed this out. “God wants to be as close as a branch is to a vine,” he wrote. “One is an extension of the other. It’s impossible to tell where one starts and the other ends. The branch isn’t connected only at the moment of bearing fruit. The gardener doesn’t keep the branches in a box and then, on the day he wants grapes, glue them to the vine. No, the branch constantly wants nutrition from the vine.”

He flows into and through us. He lives in us. We are the temples of His Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). He heals and feeds. How often do we dwell on that? Would that not bring much discipline — in eating, in drinking, in personal relationships, the idea that our bodies are temples — into our lives?

With discipline comes holiness.

“Remain in Me, and I will remain in you,” says (John 15:4). “A branch cannot produce fruit alone but must remain in the vine.”

Also, the root: God is (or should be) our root. Below is a powerful litany to Him.

See here Romans 11:17-21: “If the first fruits are consecrated, so too is the whole mass of dough, and if the root is consecrated, so too are the branches.

“If some of the branches were cut off and you, a branch of the wild olive tree, have been grafted in among the others and have come to share the rich root of the olive, do not boast against the branches. If you do boast, remember that you do not support the root; the root supports you.”

We are cut from the branch when?

When we sin. When we are preoccupied with the world. When we lack love, which is the definition of Him, which flows from Him always. Too many in religion today approach religion in a worldly legalistic fashion.

Or we are distracted. This too distances us. If you haven’t heard the new word “nomophobia,” that is the irrational fear of being without a mobile phone. How many today are glued to their devices — cell phones, tablets, iPods, televisions, laptops — instead of Christ?

It used to be just teenagers who one spotted staring at their phones, even in restaurants, even while “visiting.”

Now it’s everyone.

When we are glued to our cells, we’re glued to something that branches from thin air.

Put Jesus right in front of you. Feel His Presence. Hear His sounds. He requires no cell tower. He needs no broadcast booth. He needs no wires to communicate (how tangled in wires we are!).

Ask Him to be right in front and behind and through you every day: our hope, One attachment, our focus, what we stare at, our way of thinking, all the hours of the rest of our lives.

[Footnote from The Path Less Taken” blog:

Litany of the Love of God

Lord have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
God the Father in heaven,
Have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world,
Have mercy on us.
God, the Holy Ghost,
Have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, one God,
Have mercy on us.

Thou Who art Infinite Love,
I love Thee, O my God

Thou Who didst first love me, I love Thee, O my God