It’s always fascinating to me how we humans can forget our habits. I remembered this week that I use to be in the habit of praying a prayer…and as I remembered the revelation behind my little prayer I wondering if that was one of the reasons why I feel like my life isn’t where it use to be. Is it because tiny habits, like my prayer, are the nuts and bolts holding our lives together and when we neglect them things slowly come loose?

The prayer was an invitation, inviting the Holy Spirit into specific areas of my life.

Within the verses of John 15 I find a framework within which to live my life.

John 15 paints a clear picture of a vine with branches and fruit. It’s a metaphor, Jesus is the vine, we are the branches and he produces the fruit through us.

‘Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.’

John 15: 4

It reminds me that Jesus is my source. Disconnect from him, my life doesn’t work, connected to him I flourish.

I believe the fruit which John 15 refers to is the same fruit which is mentioned in Galatians:

‘But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!’

Galatians 5:22-23

Essentially, under all the decorative language, these are the elements I crave. I want my life to flourish in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

I want to flourish and FLOURISH BIG. I want to pray. Pray like it’s a song I can’t stop singing. I want my heart to be writing endless love letters to my King…with words, spun from all the gold I own, offered before him. Costly and priceless.

I want my roots to grow deep – to take grip in the grit and earth. I want to grow through the brick and the rock that stands in my way…and the deeper I grow the taller I stand.

Tall and lush and quiet in my soft beauty.

[Art by Kristian Hammerstad]