Wild Grapes. Isaiah 5:2. KJV
The singer of the Song of the Vineyard sings of God#039s disappointed hopes of a harvest of good grapes from all his work of clearing the soil of rocks, planting choice vines, and building a protective wall. But instead of good grapes, the vineyard produced wild grapes. 'Why did it bring forth wild grapes?' (4). The short answer is my sin. I have not produced good grapes in my life and my ten acre vineyard that ought to have created an abundance brought forth only enough to make twenty-two bottles of wine. Twenty-two bottles from ten acres of grapes!
Last night I talked to my wife about how I used to hate my life because it was a wilderness. Oh, there were moments of joy, of course, but so few, just twenty-two bottles worth. In the main, I was looking at a life of unhappiness. I did 'not regard the work of the Lord, Nor consider the operation of his hands' (12). And what was I unhappy about? That I wasn#039t happy. I was caught in a vicious circle of chasing my tail like an idiot dog.
Everything except me was the cause of my unhappiness, of those wild grapes instead of good ones. I had so many excuses--people, events, and circumstances--for not creating my happiness that I couldn#039t see that I had created a monster of excuses that excused me from being happy! I had become my excuses, and no matter what good thing happened to me I excused it so that I could continue eating my wild grapes of unhappiness.
I#039ve lived in five different countries and they#039ve all seemed to be places designed to cause me trouble, places of wild grapes only. I once had a lot of money in one but lost it. I had a good job in another but lost that too. I was married for twenty-five years but my wife died of alcoholism instead of making me happy. We had children but I thought their job was to make me happy, not be trained by me tostop making excuses. I had an adulterous affair but it made me more unhappy than ever because it was a blind passion of sin I made excuses for. Nothing I did and no one I met made me happy because I was a wild vine growing wild grapes.
'How do you feel about your life now?' my wife wanted to know. I told her that being married to her was the hardest. We have been married for twelve years but we#039ve moved house eight times! We listed those apartments and noted the bad features of each. No happiness in any. But something happened along the way as if skins were shed and not grown back, and day after day, scripture after scripture, QT after QT, Sunday after Sunday sifted our minds and our spirits, and we saw the rocks of our sins and felt them pulled out by God#039s grace. Happiness wasn#039t so important anymore because the holiness we kept hearing about slowly took root. That has been the work of God#039s hands.
My wife recently saw a deep and debilitating sin in her life that had kept her depressed and unhealthy for a great many years. And because, by God#039s grace, she saw through her long complaint to her root sin and shared it, her health is returning. And through the suffering my wife and I have shared together and inflicted on each other, God let me see the deep and debilitating sin in myself, the one of excusing myself from gratefully living the life he has so graciously given me and doing my duty to him and my neighbor in that life. I lived the wild grapes of excuses and twenty-two bottles from ten acres was what I had to show for it. How do I feel about my life now? Gratefully, happy enough. I like my life.
