We are, as Paul tells the Ephesians, rooted and grounded in love, God’s Love. So strongly rooted and grounded are we that Paul tells us elsewhere: “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom.8:38-39) That’s the gospel truth—nothing can ever separate us from God’s holy, life-giving love.

The image of a plant growing in the rich humus of God’s love brings to mind the various familiar plant parables that Jesus used in his teaching, for example: the sower strewing his seed (Mk.4:3-9), the weeds among the wheat (Mt. 13:24-30), the mustard seed (Mt.13:31-32), and the fig tree (Lk.13:6-9). And then there’s the “I am” statement of Jesus as the vine and God the Father as the vinegrower (Jn.15:1-9). In that passage we find “I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” (v.5) Looking at that statement through the lens of Paul’s “rooted and grounded” image, we can see that we are rooted and grounded in God’s love through Christ.

God has planted our very being in the firm foundation of divine love so that we may be “filled with all the fullness of God,” that we may be fruitful with God’s love in the world here and now. While God is “the ground of our being” as the theologian Paul Tillich puts it, what Gregg Braden calls “the divine matrix,” it is up to us to plunge deeply into the milieu of God’s presence so that we may grow in love, love for God, for one another, for all creation.