Are You Plugged In?

“Remain in me…”

Jesus Messiah

Sometimes we can’t figure out why the machine isn’t working. More often than we care to admit, we spend time trying to fix the machine when the solution is quite simple…

Plug it in.

Somebody - maybe even you - unplugged the cable at some point.

I have a printer temporarily sitting on my desk at home. Every time one of us needs to print something we do a quick exchange of cables under the desk and mostly forget to switch them back when we’re done.

This really annoys me a lot, because the cable being removed is almost always my laptop charger!

So, when I come along at a later stage, while in the middle of an unsaved project or a language test, with an almost dead laptop, and plug it in to charge… not even 15 minutes later my screen goes black.

I groan under my breath.

Somebody – SOMEBODY (possibly even me) unplugged my charger!

“Arrrgh… Seriously!? And nobody thought to plug it back in… How inconsiderate! Why is this printer even on my desk still? My desk was there first… I use it every day… why can’t we just leave my laptop plug alone?!"

Childish thoughts with a rather simple solution: just get an adapter with more plug points.

But that’s beside the point…

The point is that devices don’t charge when they’re not connected to a power supply. Machines are not broken or useless if they’re just unplugged. They only need to be reconnected – plugged in.

I often find that I spend so long trying to fix my “broken” life when all I need to do is connect with Jesus.

He says,

“Remain in me, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

He’s using the example of trees when he says that. The concept is the same:

Without being attached to the tree, a branch cannot stay alive.

If I don’t keep checking that I’m connected to the source of my life, I end up thinking that I’m broken… or thinking that I’m being filled with life when, in fact, I’m trying to survive without Him.