Squeezing Grapes

I love this picture taken the night before Easter. First of all, I'm sure you can see my granddaughter Reese somehow figured out how to wink for the camera. Pretty amazing for a 2 year old! The second thing I love about this photo is it includes Brooke's boyfriend Mitch, who we got to meet for the first time over the weekend.
He's a casual mix of funny,caring and personable; a perfect blend of attributes to add to this wildly wired family of ours.
Arriving home from the airport he reached into his bag and handed Bobby and I a gift. It was a beautiful book of photographs taken from the vineyards of Sonoma where he lives and works. Picturesque hilltops and valleys draped with acres of vines bursting forth color; drenched in the beauty of luscious grapes. He is a winemaker--schooled in the art of turning fruit into liquid. I quickly became enthralled considering Jesus happened to be a fabulous winemaker Himself.

The day Mitch left I poured over the pages of this book, photo by photo, as I studied the process of grapes becoming wine. The first photos capture the image of barren wooden sticks. Entangled and interwoven, these sticks are the vines that will one day house blossoms of fruit, but truthfully, they look like dead wood for a fire. Lifeless and empty, tangled on the poles meant to help them grow straight.

The next pictures show the beginning of buds. Months of harsh weather, and careful wrapping by the vine keepers have brought about a tiny bud that can hardly be seen with the eye. The buds don't look anything like grapes. As a matter of fact, they look like tiny beads of sweat on the unshaven face of a man. So fragile, that with the wipe of a tissue they might fall off the branch and dissolve in mid-air.

Now comes the sun, shining through the camera lens as though a new carpet of life has been laid over the barren rug of sticks and buds. Tiny balls of green and purple hang off the branches like toy prizes in a gumball machine. Round and plump, the acres of land host rows of purple mixed with the rich hue of green; leaves that nestle the grapes like a mama nestles her child.

The final pictures show the calloused hands of the vine dresser carrying the grapes to their final stage before fulfilling their ultimate purpose. The vine dresser places the grapes in a machine that squeezes them until they can't be recognized as grapes any longer. If grapes could cry, their tears would splash all over the drone of this machine as it takes them from their branches, and pushes them to be something far different than what they started as.

As I looked with awe at the stunning process of wine making, I was reminded that this is exactly what God does in our lives. From tangled branches that look like dead wood, to the tiny buds of new life--we begin to develop and grow. Just when we feel pretty good, and seem to look good too--it's time for the vine dresser to squeeze us so we become even more useful.

The great writer and teacher Oswald Chamber says "If we believe in Jesus, it is not what we gain, but what He pours through us that counts. It is not that God makes us beautifully rounded grapes, but that He squeezes the sweetness out of us. Spiritually, we cannot measure our lives by success, but only by what God pours through us, and we cannot measure that at all."


I don't think it's any accident that the first miracle of Jesus was to take shapeless, tasteless water--and make it valuable wine. Our lives are like that wine...to be enjoyed by many and celebrated by all. Wine squeezed and cared for by the vine dresser Himself.

Blessings!

Gari