No Graft Without the Knife

"But if some of the branches were broken off ... do not be arrogant toward the branches." (Romans 11:17-18)

The graft has to be cut in. Sit with that, because we skip past it every time, and it is the whole mechanism. You do not tape a branch to a tree. You do not lay it alongside and hope. The farmer takes a knife and opens the trunk, and opens the branch, and binds the two open places together, and the healing that closes over that wound is the union itself. Two woundings, held against each other until they become one thing.

Which means there is no grafting without cutting. We would all prefer a version of this faith where the sweetness comes without the knife, and people go looking for it, but the ones who claim to have found it are usually the ones whose fruit you would not want to eat. Sweetness without a wound is a flavoring, not a graft.

Christ was opened. His side was opened, his hands were opened, and it was through those openings that our life came. And you will be opened too. That is not a threat; it is how the joining is done. The place where you were cut, the loss, the humbling, the thing that broke you open, is exactly the place the good sap can finally get in, if you will let it be bound to him and not to your own bitterness. A wound bound to Christ becomes the union. A wound bound to bitterness becomes a scar that keeps everything out. Do not despise the cut. Ask whom you are being joined to through it.