The boards are hanging off the wall, each by a single rusty nail, four-panel windows covered in grime and rust with plants growing through them and the doors swinging with the wind that blows through the cracks. This old house was once vibrant, filled with happy faces creating memories. Children probably ran through the halls. Maybe while their curls bounced through the corridor their mother stood in the kitchen baking a fresh apple pie. They might have been waiting for their father to come home from work, and perhaps the dog was chewing on the bone curled up on the rug. Who knows. But this house was once filled with life.

 Now the floorboards are broken through, the roof allows more sunlight in than shade and the only decorative aspect are nature's design of cobwebs, vines and the remains of animals that once found this as a haven, but have now left it abandoned.  The outside however, is the only appearance of existing life. One vine has engrossed the house in a massive overtaking of green branches. Through the windows, around every corner, on every wall, every surface of this desolate house is surrounded by life surging through this vine.

Somehow I think this is how the world should be.  A desolate place surrounded by the vine. The vine is life surrounding the lifeless. In a place where emptiness and abandonment echo off the walls, the branches of the vine invade vacancy with vibrancy. Where light shines because of the cracked roof, the vine thrives, where the failure of the house is emphasized, life is emphasized. Where hideousness and appalling features are the only attributes, beauty crawls through the cracks of the boards. The life of the vine brings hope to the hopeless.

I wonder if this is how God sees the world. Where we see desperation, He sees hope. When we think it can't get worse, He sees an army being awakened to its full potential. When we see an old run down house, He sees life.

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."

John 15: 5