Caring WellНамуна

The Spiritual Life

According to John 15:4, New King James version, “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.”

Our spiritual well-being is vital to caring well.

Jesus used the metaphor of a grapevine and its branches to teach His disciples about the spiritual life. In this imagery, God our heavenly Father is the vinedresser, Jesus is the vine, and we are branches of this vine. The Spirit flows through the vine out to the branches, and we remain spiritually vibrant as we abide in the vine.

Jesus continues on in this teaching to stress that believers cannot bear fruit unless we abide in the vine and stay connected to Him. This connection enables us to bear much fruit. We connect closely to Christ, we abide in Him, through an awareness of God’s love, praying, meditating on the Word, reading God-honoring books and materials, worship, and other spiritual practices.

There is another crucial process related to fruit-bearing to consider—pruning. Vinedressers or gardeners periodically must prune back the dead leaves and stems of grapevines so that the life sap within each vine can flow out to the healthy branches, nourishing the fruit waiting to come forth.

For many of us, caregiving can feel like we are going through a pruning process. In some ways, we are. God uses the experiences and challenges of caregiving to prune away the tendencies in us that are not fruitful. By abiding in Christ, the life-giving Spirit flows through us to produce “this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23 NLT).

There are times when caregiving circumstances test our spirituality. We may respond to our loved one with an impatient tone or speak harshly to a healthcare professional. We must repent as the Spirit reveals to us the cause of those actions and attitudes. There will come a time when we will ask God to prune those tendencies from our lives and give us the grace to change.

The more intentional we are in cultivating and developing our spiritual well-being, the more helpful it will be to care from a spiritually healthy place. The key to cultivating our spiritual vitality is by abiding in Christ.

Dear God, the gardener of my soul, thank you for placing me in the vine. Allow the Holy Spirit to tend to the soil of my heart to keep me loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, gentle, and self-controlled in my caregiving. And when I am not, give me the grace to repent and self-correct quickly. In Jesus’s name, amen.

Reflection:

Think about your day and examine when you feel you were fruitful and when you were not. Note any patterns that emerge upon reflection.

*This devotion is taken from Jeanne Porter King’s book Caring Well: 90 Self-Care Devotions for the African American Caregiver.