Finding the fruit, tending the vine

“Your wife will be like a fruitful vine…
your children like olive shoots
around your table…”
--Psalm 128:3

I was at the hospital yesterday visiting a friend and in the short time that I was with her she was visited by three chaplains. By the time the third came, we were laughing.  It was like the beginning of strange joke; three chaplains walked into a hospital room: the first was a Jew, the next was a Christian, and the third was a Muslim... Now, I just need to figure out the punch-line. 

And I am wondering if the punch-line has something to do with misunderstanding. Because I’ve been thinking about misunderstanding a bit lately.  And it all started when I read Psalm 128 about a week ago. As I came to the line about the “fruitful vine” I was elated; I realized this psalm was read at our wedding! 

Back in 1988, when we were choosing readings, I remember being struck by how apt these words felt. I was marrying someone who loved gardening and I loved olives! How much more perfect can you get?  What I understood the psalm to be promising was something like this:

Marital joy and pleasure, will be yours! A companion! Children! And spaghetti sandwiches whenever you want! (And that is not a euphemism.)  I understood them to be about opulence, comfort and security –sustenance and pleasure! I half expected a Nobel Prize, and invitations to speak at Cambridge and Harvard to spring up along with all those olive shoots.  But—in hindsight—I think that might have been a slightly immature understanding of God’s promise, even of God’s fruit…

You see, what I have come to understand after 30 years of life with a beautiful wife, loving daughters, and periodic struggles with depression and insecurity, as well as a file cabinet full of rejection letters is this:  the fruits God gives us are not always the fruits we imagine we want, but they are always the fruits we need (to paraphrase Mr. Jagger & Mr. Richards). 

Here is an example of what I mean:  Last Thursday I volunteered to print and bind several copies of an anthology for a children's writing workshop I was helping with.  The booklets needed to be ready to hand out to the students when they arrived at 9am the next morning. Not a problem, I thought.  I have access to copiers, and a little binding machine.  I figured it would take a couple of hours at most.  I started working on it around 4:30pm.  Of course, everything took longer than I imagined and by 9:30 I was calling home to warn my wife that I might not be home before midnight, and in my heart I was beginning to suspect that it could take all-night.  And I was beginning to suspect that it was my own incompetence that was making everything take so long; my disorganized ways, and my hunt and peck typing skills and my lack of focus and…

I guess my wife could hear the anxiety and frustration in my voice, because the next thing I knew she was volunteering to come help me. When she offered, my initial reaction was: No. Please, don’t come. You don’t need to do this.  It’s my mess. I’ll take care of it.  But, finally she convinced me that she wanted to help and by 10:15 she (and 2 daughters) arrived with dinner in tow. They told me to take a break, and went to work.  As I ate, I could hear their laughter, their joy, bits of silly conversation ringing out as they worked and chatted.  By 11:30 they were finished. and though we were all tired, and eager to get home, our spirits were high and laughter was still ringing out.  In fact, I felt positively renewed.  I had been overwhelmed and frustrated, frightened at my own incompetence; I felt broken and useless when I called her, but now I felt almost giddy and full of life.  As we headed out the door I kept thanking them and hugging them. I couldn’t help myself.   

What kind of fruitful vine does God promise us? When I was 30, I thought it would be all strawberries and cream, olive oil and mozzarella, but now I see: sometimes it comes in the form of a wife who won’t take no for an answer.  And sometimes it might even come in the form of a husband who needs more help than he can ever imagine.  What if the real fruit has nothing to do with comfort or pleasure or spaghetti sandwiches, but is found in the opportunity to help each other, to put the needs of another before your own; the chance to be a little bit more like Christ?  What if we started looking at each other's brokenness and saw not insufficiency or something to be rejected, but a gift from God, a fruitful vine, an opportunity to grow in love (and joy and laughter)? Wouldn’t that be something? 

Now, if only I could figure out how to apply that to a hospital patient and an abundance of chaplains.