I am writing this article while attending camp. Crush Camp, that is. Each year my wife and I sign on as “cellar rats,” winery helpers, to help a friend in Walla Walla at his winery. Two years ago his wine was named the best Bordeaux-style wine from Washington state ($20 or more). So I guess we’re not doing too much damage as lowly cellar rats.

At Crush Camp, we crush the grapes, “punch down” the fermenters and press and barrel the wine. Yesterday, I went out to the vineyards with my friend to sample the grapes and, I have to admit, the first vineyard we visited surprised me.

The land he chose didn’t look very good at all. It was on a rocky slope that didn’t appear to be good soil. Sagebrush was struggling to grow just a few paces from his vines.

When I asked him about the quality of the soil, he said vines and branches that grow in rocky soils often produce excellent wines. He told me vines that suffer a little in stressful conditions can produce some of the best wines.

The vines often do their best work in poor, rocky soils, where life is precious. Growing in a place where life is a struggle, where food and water are scarce. Where suffering exists. Rocky places often familiar to each of us in our lives today.

Like the vines that struggle, that difficult life is lived out every day in our towns, in the midst of people struggling with life’s difficulties, in the midst of sorrow from lives that just didn’t turn out the way they wanted.

That difficult life is lived out in lost jobs, lost houses, broken families, hungry children and struggles with addictions.

As we walked the vineyard my friend explained his techniques for tending and pruning the vines to give the best grapes for all the vineyard.

Without the vine grower caring for the vineyard the vines end with up a tangled mass of branches, fighting each other for space and yielding a poor harvest. They become wild grapes.

And when we lose sight of the love that God has for every branch on the vine, we can easily become wild grapes wrapped in a tangled mess, arguing over who is the best vine, wanting the vineyard just for our way of thinking and living.

And we can lose sight of what God has called us to do – love and reach out to our neighbors struggling in the rocky soil called life. Loving and welcoming our neighbor even when we might not agree with our neighbor.

God knows that we all need to be tended and through God’s amazing grace and forgiveness, God tends all the branches with equal love, pruning sin from all of us.

When God, the great vine grower, works in our lives, tending us all with grace, it allows the branches to flourish in harmony and reach out to those branches that are struggling to survive.

The growing season called life is often full of uncertainty. Yet we need not fear, for the vine grower is truly in love with the vineyard and all its branches, tending them carefully to produce the greatest yields for the kingdom.

You know something? Being a “cellar rat” in God’s vineyard can be a lot of fun.

Comments? Contact me at pastordan@skynetbb.com.