Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.”
NL Daily Devotion for Thursday, June 8, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
I do not have a green thumb. I’m perfectly happy digging in the dirt and planting things, and I adore them while they’re doing well. But, you know, you have to actually remember to water them and occasionally weed and maybe fertilize and, um… well I think you can see where this is headed.
God, on the other hand, never gives up. God creates the perfect conditions for us to thrive, plants us with love, and continues to tend to us on the daily, so that we have all we need to bloom and bear fruit. And still, we perversely insist on ignoring all of this tending so that we can do whatever we want whenever and however we want. So our grapes are often on the sour side.
We could expect God to just uproot us completely, as is so often depicted in the Bible by Israel’s being overrun and/or destroyed by other nations. But that’s not actually what God does. We may do it to ourselves (and we often do) and yet in the background, God is still diligently kneeling in the dirt, plucking out the choking thorns, adding fertilizer to our roots, and nourishing us with lifegiving water, knowing that the potential for good fruit is always there, and waiting with eternal patience for the time when we remember whose we are and respond in gratitude for all that we have been given.
What does it mean to me to bear good fruit in my day to day life? When do I refuse and bear wild grapes instead?
