Abide in Me, and I in you.

How many times have I read that the last few months, poring over John 15, mining for gold. And each time, it glimmers in a unique way, catching my eye, my breath. “Come, let us reason together,” I hear a whisper say. “Follow Me.”

Something tells me that those few words are like the door at the back of a wardrobe. Dare I step through? How could I not?

I read it again.

And I in you.

My mind scrambles to comprehend, even as the world goes spinning a bit off kilter. Him? Live in me?

“Lose your life in Mine,” the whisper says. “Lay down your nets. Count it all loss. Take up your cross.”

And then?

“Find life. My life. My powerful, pulsing, abundant life pouring into you. Abiding in you.”

Fruit, much fruit. Fruit that remains. Leaves, always green. Never withering, even in drought. A mystery?

Yes, a mystery. An invitation to step through the door, leaving my world behind, finding life that I never could imagine until I experience it. In me.

But leave it all behind? Lose my life?

Suddenly I see “my life,” this treasure I’m so apt to cling to desperately, as a branch laying on the ground. What, exactly, is a branch unless connected to its life-source? A stick. A stick! And I would count that as gain to me?

Be my own branch — my own dead stick — or lose my life in Him, only to have His life pulse through me, working miraculously, producing fruit, becoming a part of Him?