She looked at him, bewildered. “What do you mean, he doesn’t want that? The New Testament has all these commands about living the Christian life. If I don’t try hard—”

He held up his hand, and she stopped walking.

“I’m not saying you don’t have a role to play,” he replied. “I’m saying you don’t have to wear yourself out trying. You’re seeing yourself as the one who has to make the Christian life work.”

“But who’s going to make it work if I don’t?” She knew the frustration was evident in her voice.

“Jesus is.”

Her shoulders slumped. She wanted a fresh idea, not something she had known for thirty years. “Well, of course Jesus will do it. But I still have to—”

He shook his head again. “Let’s walk some more.”

They continued down the path. “Abby, the most important thing for you now is not to do something differently but to see something differently. Jesus is the life within you. How old were you when you first trusted in him?”

“Five. At least, that’s what Mom told me. I don’t really remember.”

He nodded. “So when you were five, God gave you spiritual life. You already had biological life, but you had a spirit dead to God. You were born that way; we all are. So God did a heart transplant in you. He took out your dead spirit and gave you a new human spirit, made like him. Then he himself came to live in you—joined himself to your new spirit. Now you are permanently connected to the source of life itself. That’s how his life flows into you, and through you.”

She paused on the trail, lost in thought. What he said resonated on a certain level, but what difference did this make when her prayers went unanswered or when she was trying to maintain pure thoughts about Creighton? Jesus wasn’t going to think purely for her.

“I hear what you’re saying,” she said, “but I still have to do something. Jesus doesn’t make my mouth move to say the right words to someone.”

He chuckled. “No, he doesn’t. But that takes care of itself once your mindset has changed—once you see things as he does. When you do, his load really does become easy and his burden light, just as he said. You’ve been carrying a heavy load.”

He was right about that. She took a deep breath. “Okay, explain that to me.”

Poppy reached up and pulled a limb down toward them. “You remember the story Jesus told about the vine and the branches?”

She resisted the impulse to roll her eyes. Of course I remember it. “Yes.”