Most of us, myself included, rather like the idea of a song written just for us. To know that someone feels so deeply for us that they cannot keep it in. We can’t escape love songs. Not even in the Bible. In Isaiah, it is a little less romantic than we might hope or want, this love song to a vineyard. A vineyard that doesn’t yield the intended fruit. We know that story, too, when what we hope for, what we plant and nurture and nourish, does not bear the fruit we hope for but something else, something that is less desirable or altogether unusable. It is easy to condemn that which doesn’t bear fruit, the relationships that make better breakup songs than love songs. God’s promise to Isaiah and to us is that even when we do not bear the intended fruit, God still has a place for us. That in order for new life to take place, the total destruction of the old thing has to take place. That’s what death and resurrection is all about after all.
God, write a love song on our hearts of your love, that we would know that you delight in us always, and make space for new life when the life and relationship we hope for does not come to pass. Amen. —