I finally came across a scripture passage that described this phenomenal blackcurrant! You really need to read the passage for this to make any sense.
A couple of years ago I created a Hügelkultur bed. I gathered discarded branches and logs of various sizes and buried them under a mound of earth, in the hope that the rotting wood would become a spongy mass and act as a reservoir for water, keeping the soil moist and reducing the need for watering. It was not a great success. Last autumn, I decided to turn it inside out, using the not very rotted wood to make a very rustic-looking frame for a more conventional vegetable bed. In so doing, I discovered a branch that had taken root and had even produced a shoot with some leaves on it. I was so amazed that this branch had spent those two years under the ground growing an extensive root system, to only in the previous few weeks emerge into the sunlight that I decided that I had to give it another chance (in its favour was the fact that I suspected it might be a currant). I replanted it into the newly-formed bed and waited. In the last week, I have been rewarded by a very vigorous bush producing clusters of succulent blackcurrants. When I read Ephesians 3:14-20 this morning, I knew that I had found the perfect Bible passage to describe this phenomenon.
The passage starts with the statement that every family in heaven and on earth takes its name from the Father – and so this anonymous branch maintained its identity as a blackcurrant, an identity written into the DNA of each of its resilient cells, despite being discarded and buried. Of all the branches that I buried, this was the only one that clung onto life – its inner being having been strengthened by the power of the Spirit that gives life to all things, according to the riches of the glory of Christ who rose from the dead. Through the faith of God in his creation, the life of Christ dwelt within the heart of this branch, which was literally rooted and grounded in the depths of the earth, nourished by the love of its creator.
And once the branch was ready, it sent a shoot to the outside world – and reached sunlight! As its leaves started to flow with energy, it comprehended, with all the other chlorophyll-containing saints (I’m looking at my glorious pea plants as I write this, the breadth and length and height and depth of the generosity of God who provides light –light which feeds and sustains, and fills them with the fullness of God. Then, wonder of wonders, the power at work within that discarded branch accomplished abundantly far more than all I could have asked for or imagined – beautiful clusters of delicious currants. To God be glory in the church, in my garden and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
