Daily Manna · Day 280 · October 7
Abiding in the Vine
“I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.”
Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. Everybody in that room knew how Isaiah's song ends: he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.
Israel had been the vine for centuries by then. Isaiah uses it, Jeremiah uses it, the eightieth psalm says thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt, and there was a vine worked in gold over the doors of the temple where these men had been that week. It is a national image, and in every prophet who reaches for it the vine disappoints. So when Jesus says I am the true vine, at night, days from the end, he is doing something larger than picking an illustration from a hillside. He is taking a name the nation wore and putting himself inside it.
And that changes what is being asked of the branch. Not produce, which is what the old vineyard was expected to do and did not. Abide. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit. A branch does not manufacture a grape by concentrating; it stays joined and carries up what the vine sends. Then he shuts the alternative down in six words: without me ye can do nothing. Not less fruit. Nothing.
The old vineyard failed at producing. You will fail at it too, and that is not the accusation it sounds like. It is the entire reason the vine changed.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 280 is Finish My Course (Acts 20:24).