I’ve shared
before about the lessons I’ve learned about discipleship from being an
amateur vinedresser. This year I got another lesson, and a very timely one.
Our vines seemed to be doing well this year, almost flourishing
(except on the side that is regrowing, but even that was doing well enough.) I
noticed that some vines were intertwining among the forsythia that grows
nearby, even extending through the pine that stands over by the road. The vine
was reaching almost two stories up the branches! I’d known that the vines had
grown wild around the property before we moved in, and figured that some roots
had sprouted. I thought little about the rogue vines – I had no intention of
trying to cultivate them.
When the clusters ripened on the tended vines, I was a bit
surprised at how modest our harvest was. The grapes were all good, with little
lost to mold or other damage, there were just fewer clusters than I’d expected.
Even last year we’d been able to get three jam batches out of fewer vines; this
year we just made two. It was good jam,
there just wasn’t as much as I’d been expecting.
It was when I was doing one of the last lawn mowings of the
season that I almost tripped (literally) on the issue with the scant yield: a
rather sizable stem shooting from the roots of my cultivated vines over into
the base of the forsythia. I’m accustomed to roots and low-running stems around
the base of the vines, but this seemed like a much longer stem. I examined the
stem, and thought about how relatively few grapes I’d harvested, and considered
how bountiful and flourishing those rogue vines were, and then went for my axe.
My vines had sprouted a fruitless offshoot that had gone mad
all summer. It wasn’t the wild growth that was the problem, it was the fact
that the wild growth had taken place at the expense of the crop. Those vines
are cultivated and tended to produce fruit, not to grow as many leaves and stems
as possible in the neighboring hedge. Water and nutrients that had been
supposed to grow grapes had instead been wasted on useless growth. Of course,
the vine can hardly be blamed – plants grow wherever and however they can – but
I certainly learned a lesson, and will be much more vigilant about excess growth
in the future.
But the incident made me mindful of Isaiah 5 – the song of the
vineyard. The Master of the vineyard is no rookie like I am. He knows how to
expertly watch and trim vines so there is no rogue growth. But we humans are
not like vines – we have free will. If we choose to, we can send the “shoots”
of our imagination, our resources, or effort off into fruitless realms, neglecting
the fruit of good deeds and moral effort that is expected of us. So, as I splintered the stem that had been
feeding the wild vine growth, I wondered how much of my life is like that –
parts of me sprouting off to do what I want to do, even thinking I’m doing well
because Look At All My Leaves!, but totally missing what I’m supposed to be
doing with my life. Where is the fruit of charity that the Father expects when
He comes for His harvest? Will it be bountiful because I was diligent, or scant
because I was distracted doing other things that I found more immediately
rewarding?
I spotted the rogue vine today, withering among the forsythia
branches. I had no sympathy for it – it had been worse than useless. But I also
thought of John 15:2, and wondered
what kind of branch I was, and would be judged to be.
