March 24 – The Grafted Life

We spent yesterday in the Abbey in consideration of this point:

Can we in Cor Unum, can those whose lives are redeemed in the Lord Jesus Christ, live “perfectly” before God? More to the point, we stated the conditions: we are faulty, fearful, frail people, and we are commanded to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.

The Scripture itself gives us the answer to the mystery. When a wild olive tree begins to grow cultivated produce, grafting has taken place. When a host fruit tree begins to grow a variety not its own, look to the grafted branch!

In Cor Unum, today, we will love with a love we cannot manufacture.

We will hope with hope that we cannot sustain, and we will live by a concept that would be less intelligible to us than the call of the wind over the prairie, apart from engrafting. That concept is stated simply, “the just shall live by faith.”

God extends the entire justice of life from the dead to those who will believe that He loves them and will abide with them . . . in them . . . that they may love and hope and believe, continually, by the love and hope and faith of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We are planted in Him, and His life is flowing through us.

The doors of Cor Unum open day by day to those who hear the call of the Husbandman: “Have it! Have the life of the Son in exchange for doubt and fear, selfishness and death! Have it! He is the Vine, and you are the branches!”

The door opens, and we step into the monastery of the heart where we will have what the wounds of Jesus Christ have opened to us.



"The Wind Blows Where It Will"
photo by Kerry