Struggle and Fruitfulness

                                                   Struggle and Fruitfulness!

  Everyone has grown a garden or a fruit tree or something in his or her lifetime, right? Ok, at least watered a houseplant and had the feeling of participating for a moment  in the wonder and mystery of growing things!

  So, growing a couple of robust bunches of grapes like you see in the picture wouldn’t be that unusual for a gardener, right? They would be pretty normal for my garden except for this one fact: the fruit was, unknown and completely hidden from sight, invisible in the tangled knots of my unkempt pile of bramble on the grapevine.

   A little backstory is needed here. I made great plans for these vines in the winter and spring. While dormant, I pruned them carefully and according to good instructions for grape production. The only thing that I never accomplished for them was to build the trellises they would need to be supported when they blossomed.

   Somehow, sadly, life got busy and days changed in to months and no trellis took form, my bad. That being the case, nature did want it does best, so secretly, it made a way for life! To my shock, one day, I harvested, an incredible, 20 lbs. of sweet delicious luscious fruit, very much, by surprise.

   You see, knowing I had failed to build the trellis, and to make the backyard neat in appearance, I went out on a warm July day to finally cut off the seemingly unruly and unproductive overgrowth of my grapevine. I had tried to ignore it feeling really guilty about the whole mess. I even considered taking the vines out altogether.

  The limbs of the grapevines were hopelessly choked and tangled. After I cut them, to my wonder, I had a hard time lifting the severed branches from the ground. I cut them free everywhere that I could see a clinging tendril and still there was resistance, weight!      

  I gave a mighty pull and up came a huge cluster of bright green, Thompson Seedless Grapes and then more clusters of perfectly dulcet grape berries!  Never had I expected this. A gimungous smile broke out on my face as I received the undeserved abundance of God, in nature’s goodness. I ran for a bucket to gather the bounty!

           So you might ask, “Why tell this story Ron?” Here are the reasons I did:

    I learned that day that sometimes a harvest can come to us by surprise when least expected and in an unlikely situation.

  I observed that what may seem unfruitful, unproductive and unsightly, like my overgrown vine nightmare can in fact hold hidden treasures. It just needs to be uncovered to be discovered and reveled in.

  And, isn’t it amazing that there is the possibility of fruitfulness when the favor of expected support and just (what is appropriate) care are neglected. Growth can and does take place through struggle and in spite of unlikely odds of success.

  These days I’m much slower to judge by the outward appearances of misfortune, insignificant social stature or a humble station in life. As I see it, this little true story applies to life, giving me hope and joy knowing that powers are at work invisibly making good in difficult circumstances; you see, a struggle isn’t the end of the story for a grapevine, or a human. A struggle is often a beginning of success and fruitfulness, sometimes by surprise.