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, March 19, 2020
by R. Fergus Moir, Clergy Stuff
Vineyards are incredibly labor intensive. In the ancient world, it took a whole lot of time and a whole lot of people to successfully bring in a crop of grapes. For example, grapes were so important to the people of that time that watchtowers were a critical part of the vineyard, in order to defend the crop from marauders.
In this beautiful song in Isaiah, God sings of Israel, who God had called, blessed, liberated, and protected for generations. Yet time after time, no matter how much God nurtured Israel, that nation only yielded sour grapes. In other words, they did not bear fruit the way God wanted.
Not much has changed. A couple thousand-plus years after Isaiah, as a society we still fail to bear the fruit God has nurtured in us, no matter how much we claim to be God’s people. We still bear the wild grapes of injustice, oppression, exploitation, greed, and self-absorption.
God continues to care for us, to love and nurture and tend, despite our stubborn willfulness. And God will continue to do so, calling us back to the purpose for which we were created.
Gracious God, help me to bear good fruit, as you intend for me and the world. Amen.
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