Growing Stronger on the Vine

It’s a widely-held belief in the advertising industry that the long Christmas and New Year break offers people a great opportunity to make plans for their summer holidays.  In my case this year, it was more productive than many.  Instead of leaving things until the last moment, I’m all fixed up for a – hopefully sunny – week in July.  My mission is to lay one more ghost of the past, by re-visiting somewhere I went to many years ago with my now ex-wife.  It was, in fact, quite an enjoyable time, marred only by the fact that I was there on business, and it was actually she who did all the sightseeing!

Whilst musing on this aspect, I recalled a week I’d spent a few years ago with a Quaker family in Lincolnshire.  This was a more significant ghost-busting expedition, since it was somewhere else that the two of us had visited, this time during a rather tense episode of our life together, and I benefited greatly from the relaxation of being there years later on my own.  I recall sitting at my breakfast one sunny morning, looking through the open door to a great vine growing in the conservatory. 

Had it stood erect, the plant must have been a good eight feet from the pot to the tip of the topmost shoot, though this was hard to judge since it was tied across the metal rods that supported the roof.  If it were not suspended like that, the vine wouldn’t have been nearly so luxuriant; it would have got no taller than a foot or so above the pot, and then toppled, before perhaps being trodden underfoot.  

I wonder whether our lives are sometimes paralleled by the growth of such vines, straggling unadventurously, scarcely moving from the security of a humdrum routine, so long as we rely on our own efforts for development.  How much greater we can be if we are supported, if we are lashed to something firm, like that vine was to those roof stays.

Jesus used a vine as an illustration of his teaching (see chapter 15 of St. John’s Gospel).  Sadly there is an unwritten rule within our culture that says we should be able to stand on our own two feet, do everything for ourselves, and live independent lives.  We feel it’s a sign of weakness to admit that we can’t cope, that we need help, support or guidance.  

It’s a most selfish attitude, of course.  By kidding ourselves that we can be independent, we are not only reducing our own efficiency, but we’re denying someone the privilege of helping, of being the hands or feet of God in a situation for which they are particularly suited, and maybe called.  

To finish I’ll pass on a wise saying that (I now admit) always bears repetition.  Next time you have even the slightest doubt about your ability to manage something – be it family or business, major or trivial – remember to “Let go, and let God!”