Walking through a park, I passed a massive tree. A vine had grown up along its trunk.

The vine started small---nothing to bother about.

But over the years, the vine had gotten taller and taller. By the time I passed, the entire lower half of the tree was covered by the vine's creepers. The mass of tiny feelers was so thick that the tree looked as though it had innumerable birds' nests in it.

Now the tree was in danger.

This huge, solid oak was quite literally being taken over; the life was being squeezed from it.

But the gardeners in that park had seen the danger.

They had taken a saw and severed the trunk of the vine---one neat cut across the middle.

The tangled mass of the vine's branches still clung to the oak, but the vine was now dead. That would gradually become plain as weeks passed and the creepers began to die and fall away from the tree.

How easy it is for sin, which begins so small and seemingly insignificant, to grow until it has a strangling grip on our lives.

And yet, Christ's death has...

As you know, we send out a weekly inspirational story to anyone who wishes to receive it. We also post the story on our blog where readers can comment on it or even share it on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.

Typically, a story will get about eight comments, and around 100 people will share it via some form of social media.

In December of 2013, we posted a story called "My First Christmas in Heaven", a touching poem about a loved one that has passed away and is spending the first Christmas in heaven. When it was first posted, it got the typical response.

For some reason, it caught fire on social media in December 2014. People started sharing it with their friends, and it was all linked to our AllWorship blog. We started receiving some of the most touching, heartfelt comments, such as:

This was a very fitting poem to share with my Mom Brothers and sisters, and the rest of our Family. We lost my Dad this past March, there isn’t a day that goes by that our hearts don’t ache from missing him.

Our son, Christopher, (meaning Christ-bearer) died a year ago in September. He was 47. Thank you for sharing this. I could “hear” him speaking. This is very helpful as that loss will never go away.

The poem brought thousands upon thousands of people to our website for the first time. In fact, it led to the highest traffic we have ever experienced in a week, and even got 96,000 "likes" on Facebook in December 2014.

We didn't think it could get any better. It did.

In December 2015, people once again started sharing the poem and linking it to our blog. The two weeks leading up to Christmas became record traffic for us once again, bringing nearly six times the average traffic to AllWorship during this time. There are now 130 personal comments, and nearly 388,000 people have "liked" the poem on AllWorship. So many new people have been exposed to the free Christian music on AllWorship because of this social media phenomenon, and our ministry has been blessed beyond measure.

Some encouraging emails we received in December from our listeners around the world:

Location: Toronto
Comments: I'm at a critical time in my life where I have papers upon papers to write for my first semester in seminary. Your instrumental playlists have helped me focus and de-stress tremendously. Thank you so much, and may God continue to bless and sustain this online ministry.

Location: Unknown
Comments: Thank you for this awesome message. We are blessed as I send this out to around a hundred other believers around the world. Praise God for what you people do. Thank you for this awesome message.

Location: United States
Comments: AllWorship, you have blessed me beyond words with your 24/7 Christian music. I'm overwhelmed by it all! God bless you abundantly and may the light you shine ever so brightly continue to shine into so many dark lives in these end times! Bountiful blessings and love.