Pastor and Farmer Brent Anderson's Guest Blog: Vine Borers Eating Away At Your Relationship With Jesus?....

Jesus said in John 15:5 "I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." Well, this season I was able to experience a unique perspective on the truth of these words. One early morning, as I walked through the Sow Good Garden, I happened to notice our zucchini plants looking a little droopy and withered. With limited understanding about the many variables that could lead to this apparent deterioration, I proceeded to check what I knew to check. As I suspected, the drip irrigation was working properly, the soil moisture seemed ok and, after re-figuring my mixture calculations for the foliar application I had used a few days before, everything looked in order. What could be the culprit? There certainly weren't any signs of bugs or pests that I could see. So, I did what anyone would do when they had exhausted their cognitive resources; I phoned a friend. "Surely," I thought, "Scott at 180 Degree Farm will know what's going on with these plants." Within just a few minutes, I was educated about about a sneaky, elusive creature affectionately know as the "vine borer."

The cool thing about this story was the remedy to this "vine infiltrator." Scott proceeded to instruct me to take a sharp blade and, ever-so-gently, cut along the base of the plant, open it up and extract the little pest. So with this surgery complete on more than 20 zucchini plants, I began to look with anticipation for signs of life. That afternoon the plants had perked up and it appeared to be a successful operation. Maybe, for some of you who have farmed for years, this wouldn't be very exciting; but I was stoked! For the next week I enjoyed watching the zucchini plant produce healthy fruit, but, before I knew it, these vine munchers were back. From what I can tell, these perpetrators are a common problem, difficult to combat, and repeat offenders. So until there is an effective organic solution to eradicate these pests (and I'm open to your comments and insight) we will just have to be diligent to destroy them as we see them at work.

Remaining in the Vine, Jesus Christ, produces an overwhelming experience of fruitful life. That being said, there are so many "vine borers" that come to eat away at the connection you can share with the Lord. Galatians 5 gives us some understanding of a few things that are antagonistic to the "fruit of the Spirit." These include enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, and divisions. I want to encourage you to be diligent to combat these infiltrators when you see signs of "withering" in your life, because Jesus wants you to "bear much fruit."