What do growing vines teach us about the spiritual life? Inspired by nature’s wild extroversion, discover how the unfettered growth of a vine can illuminate our own paths of creative emergence and spiritual flourishing.

In the Kingdom of God, the harvest represents the consummation of a process that unfolds over time. It is the result of many seasons of God’s faithful cultivation of us and our world that ripens us individually and collectively into who we were created to be.

It’s the long winter spent in silence and solitude as we face our false selves and die to them.

It’s the emergence of new dreams and visions as we awaken to our true selves within.

It’s the risk of vulnerability as we show up in the world in bud break.

It’s the giving and receiving in mutual respect for one another’s gifts to cross-pollinate and set the fruit

And it’s the stress of ripening the fruit we are called to bear in the world that finally yields a fruit worth harvesting that will make an eternal impact.

The harvest; therefore, isn’t always “out there,” as though we could somehow tangibly measure or collect into baskets the fullness of what God has done. But the harvest is often “in here,” through the overflow of who we are becoming individually and collectively as a beloved community.

So what’s reaped in the harvest?

“If you come to that season and have done the work in the growing months prior, you will likely look at the fruit and see that it is clean and happy. Now it’s just a matter of time before you can reap it.” - Dave Bos

After months of dedicated pruning, the vine undergoes a transformation, channeling its energy away from growth and towards the ripening of the right fruit. This transformative phase is known as veraison, where the once vibrant green grapes begin to shift in color, typically turning red, gray, or yellow depending on the vine's variety. The ripening process turns acidic and tart grapes sweet. However, veraison brings with it a unique form of stress for the vine.

Veraison represents a crucial point in the vine's life cycle, marked by a delicate balance between growth and ripening.

It was an unseasonably cold and windy day at the end of June when I arrived at the Harbor Pavilion jutting out to the East Bay of Lake Michigan in Elk Rapids. Several white haired women scuttled their way inside the closed pavilion for the monthly Elk Rapids Garden Club meeting where Dave would be presenting on biodynamic farming.

When I spotted him, he and his sister Elizabeth were making their way inside carrying several cardboard boxes of wine and supplies. Dave was wearing his typical navy baseball cap donned with sunglasses and a short sleeved farmer’s plaid shirt. As they made their way towards the back of the room, we worked together to lay out a charcuterie-like spread of wine from their wine garden, several books on biodynamic farming, a cow horn, small white bowls of soil prep, and handfuls of white yarrow and nettle.

We snapped a few pictures, made a few introductions, and then Dave began with his lecture with a captive audience of gardeners on the edge of their seats. And I, who cannot even count myself a gardener, was right there with them. Even though I had known Dave from the several interactions we had over the course of four years in the vineyards, I was eager to listen in to discover more.

As we talked in a vineyard, I asked my vinedresser friend, Dave, about what he thought Jesus was referring to in this passage. He reached down and grabbed the sturdy part of the vine that goes underground into the roots, his fingers inches apart from touching, “This is the vine,” he said, and then he reached up and gently wrapped his fingers around the two branches hanging on the trellis like limbs, “and these are the branches.”

The vine is the anchoring place that draws up all the nutrients and water and provides the branches with what they need to grow and to bear fruit. The vine is the life source for the rest of the plant. Christ, the rootstock, is the one in whom we find all life and sustenance to thrive and bear Kingdom fruit.

As the weather warms up, the sap begins to flow back into the branches of the vine. Life and movement are being channeled from the energy stored up in dormancy in the winter and are on the verge of explosive growth. On the verge of resurrection.

Like the vine, as we journey out of seasons of dormancy and loss into spring, we feel alive again and begin to see more clearly. The life-force of the Spirit begins to flow through us and awaken us out of a spiritual slumber. 

So much energy is stored up, ready to break through in spring. We have hard-earned lessons that we want to manifest above ground. All the hidden work in the darkness of the soil has refined us into a new creation brimming with vitality, vigor, and vision. We are ready to grow and bear fruit for the kingdom.

But according to Jesus, explosive growth begins with pruning. I know…isn’t it the worst?

As vines descend into the roots during post-harvest, vinedressers dig up the soil and replenish the vines with fertilizer. The context of descent is through shovelfuls of manure. There is no sugarcoating this.

From creation we see that what was once waste; the stinky, debased, undignified, and flat out nasty parts of life give us the nutrients we need to become the thriving new creation we were meant to be.

Lent is a time where we re-orient ourselves around the death and resurrection of Christ. A time of transition where we descend from the life of Christ into the death of Christ. We begin this journey with Ash Wednesday as we remember the dust from which we were made and the ground to which we are returning. And we end the journey as we pass through the death of Christ, sit with him in the tomb, and wait for resurrection.

We see this transition all over the created order, but one of the greatest parallels is in the transition from the fall harvest to winter dormancy.

What is the difference between fruitfulness and productivity? In a post industrial world, what can we learn from the way things grow and naturally produce fruit that might challenge the way we define and measure faithfulness in the Kingdom of God?

What does it mean to be fruitful? How does fruit form?

We can learn a great deal from studying the way creation forms fruit in the natural order.

Perhaps, with the encouragement of Jesus, maybe we need to spend a little time “considering the lilies.”

Where does breakthrough come from? How do we emerge from seasons of waiting and winter to unfold into who we were made to be?

What I learned from a friend, painting, and a Vine about lament and resurrection.