1st December

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs 3, 5

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 1 John 5, 13

Drop the branch!

"I have to acknowledge to you Martine, I become more and more anxious when I think of death and what happens after it."

- "Well, you see, I am happy to know this. God invites you to prepare yourself." Frances is shocked by this answer and tells Martine all the efforts she has done to be saved: prayers, reading of the Gospel, going to Church meetings. Frances asks Martine: "What have you done to be so calm?"

- "I have not done anything. It is Jesus who has done everything for me."

After this assertion which she does not understand well Frances kneels down in her room for a long time and falls asleep. She dreams that she falls into a dreadful precipice but she holds onto a branch and stays hanging in the emptiness. She screams desperately: "Help me, Lord, save me!" She then hears a voice which says: "Drop the branch". She continues debating. The voice repeats: "I can only save you if you drop the branch." She finally drops the branch, falls into stretched out arms and wakens up.

Frances understands that Jesus is worthy of all her confidence and that nothing is needed to be added to his job on the cross. It is useless to hold onto the "branch" of her own merits.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God." (Ephesians 2, 8) After being saved we should wish to serve him.