Living in the Spirit

August 8, 2022

Scripture Reading: Isaiah 5:1-7

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 watch-tower in the midst of it,
   and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
   but it yielded wild grapes.

And now I will tell you
   what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
   and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
   and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a waste;
   it shall not be pruned or hoed,
   and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
   that they rain no rain upon it.  –Isaiah5:1-2, 5-6

I must confess I like wild grapes. They grew on the trees that skirted the creek running through our farm. I have a taste for sour and they are indeed sour. My memory is fuzzy, but I think we only gathered and ate them once a year and I do not remember my mother making preserves of them. Don’t think I inherited my taste for sour from her. My mother was a dedicated gardener. The first verse of the above scripture describes my mother well, although she had a garden, not a vineyard and she canned and froze produce rather than making wine.  

This scripture is an allegory. Isaiah is warning the people that God created and provided us with not only the good earth but also a way of being that required us to care for and cherish the gifts of God’s earth but also his love which sets an example for the way we could thrive if we followed the path of God’s love and righteousness.

During the summer in the cool of the morning, my mother would most often be found planting seeds and then hoeing weeds from the garden and gathering ripe vegetables. While for me the wild grapes were a treat for a few days, mom’s garden fed us year-round.

Prayer: Lord, teach us to love and care for one another as a way of being. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.