4/28/2016 – Wednesday of the 5th week of Easter – John 15:1-5

     If Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, how do we abide in him?  How does he abide in us?  I was recently reading an article about Herman Melville’s famous novel Moby Dick.  Most people remember the short three word sentence that is one of the most famous opening lines of a novel from American literature:  “Call me Ishmael.”  Later in the book, there is an interesting quote about a Polynesian island that the crew comes upon, as Ishmael states: “"It is not down in any map; true places never are."  On our journey through life, there is certainly a physical journey, but there is an internal journey of faith.  We have to take in all of the externals of our journey and process them in our faith in the depths of the soul.   Sometimes it is easier to concentrate on the externals and to ignore that faith places where we go. Perhaps those true place are those places on our faith journey that are marked in the spiritual realm, not the temporal earthly realm.  On our faith journey, may we go beyond our time and our efforts, take time to abide in Christ and to listen to him.