Week Five

Part 5: Under our feet

Conversation starter

Do you have a favourite tree? Perhaps a specific one from a garden or local park? Maybe it’s one from childhood? Or perhaps a favourite type of tree?

Read Psalm 1

What helps you to feel rooted, sustained and nourished — like a fruitful tree planted by streams of water — in your daily walk with God?

Read John 15: 1-5

In cooler climates vines are sometimes planted next to a greenhouse. A hole is then cut in the wall so that the stem can grow inside. That way the fruit can feel the benefit of the warmth inside but the roots can still get to the rain!

As we grow as disciples we perhaps benefit from this mixture of rain and shelter too. Sometimes we need comfort and nurturing and sometimes we need bracing refreshment. As we explore Jesus’s compelling metaphor of the vine we could imagine that his Father, the gardener, has planted us out in the open air but next to a greenhouse. As disciples what are the ways we are rooted in Jesus and putting ourselves out there in the world serving alongside him? Out on a limb and out in the cold, ready for the rain?

And in what ways are we taking shelter and time to be nurtured and grow in the warmth of God’s love and the community of one another?

Read Proverbs 16: 24

Honey is sustenance spun from flowers, pockets of beauty bursting into sweetness and nourishment. In our gracious words and actions we spin a honey that sustains one another.

Can we make plans to use gracious words in specific circumstances we are going to face in the week ahead so as to bring sweetness and healing?