Isaiah 5

As a gardener, you can see how much room I have for improvement. I have very good excuses for my neglect, and thankfully there is a special glory in my showing up and offering even these meager efforts. Without them, there wouldn't be any tomato plants on the pool deck at all. But the fact that I'm doing the best I'm able and certainly the fact that I have intentions to do even better don't change Thirsty's reality. He suffers from time to time. I have to acknowledge that. Thankfully, God has a way of using even - no, especially - the suffering to tell a story wholly unique and beautiful, and that brings him glory. It wouldn't be told at all if I hadn't brought my tomato home from Costco six weeks ago.

But have you read Isaiah 5?

"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;
and he looked for it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes."

It was a “very fertile hill.” The soil was black with fecundity, the waterings faithful and regular. If Thirsty's tomatoes taste good after my sorry efforts at staking, watering, and pruning, what results might this Planter achieve? He dug out his field, cleared it, planted it, built a watchtower, and hewed out a vat, laboring with love and preparing to make a very fine wine. But in spite of everything he did, the grapes turned out wild. They tasted sour or bitter or bland, as if no one had ever done anything for them, as if they had just grown up along a path in the woods. I can understand Thirsty's fruit tasting sour (but it doesn't!): I've barely done anything right. But he didn't do one wrong thing, and his grapes showed nothing for it.

What a good gardener this beloved is. We're the ones who aren't good. (Just look at my gardening.) This doesn't make me feel bad about myself, really, just amazed at his goodness and awed that he loves me.

(2011)