Tend This Vine

What Fear Would Prune Away

The law of the LORD is perfect and revives the soul.

— Psalm 19

…behold and tend this vine; preserve what your right hand has planted.

— Psalm 80

Yesterday I was talking with a trusted confidante whom I met a little over two years ago. I told her that I have begun to feel as though a long chapter of my life is ending. We met during a difficult transition in my family, and everything that has happened since then suddenly seems to belong within one long set of parentheses. Now I can sense the closing parenthesis approaching. There is sadness in that, even though I don't yet know what comes after it.

Lately, some of that sadness has become fear. My life has taken an unconventional shape, including spending considerable time house-sitting in other people's homes. What if someday I'm alone somewhere and something happens to me? What if nobody knows? Maybe, I told her, it is time to stop doing this and settle down somewhere. But she told me something I wasn't expecting. She said she misses my dreams. When we first met, she heard me imagining possibilities for my life. Even the house-sitting had become something I was learning to use creatively, perhaps as part of a larger future. She didn't want to see me surrender those dreams because I had become afraid.

Then I came back to these Psalms. “The law of the LORD is perfect and revives the soul.” And, “Behold and tend this vine; preserve what your right hand has planted.” Perhaps revival doesn't always mean getting my old life back. And perhaps preservation doesn't mean keeping everything exactly as it is. A gardener preserves the vine, not every leaf that has ever grown upon it. Seasons come. Branches grow. Fruit appears. Leaves fall. The living thing continues into seasons it has never seen before.

But there is another possibility I hadn't considered. Fear can masquerade as tending the vine. I can become so concerned about protecting myself from everything that might happen that I begin pruning away possibilities simply because they contain uncertainty. Prudence matters. Circumstances change, and sometimes plans really should change with them. But fear alone is a poor gardener. There is a difference between recognizing that a season has ended and ending it myself because I am frightened of what might happen next.

Maybe that is part of what it means for God to “tend this vine.” Something can be ending without me ending. Something can be sad without being wrong. I don't have to preserve the chapter that is closing, nor do I have to know the chapter that comes next. Perhaps I need only to remain alive to what God is still growing—to let the soul be revived, the vine be tended, and even now, to leave some room for dreams.

Reflectionary is an ongoing conversation with Scripture. If these reflections are meaningful to you, please subscribe and come back often. And by all means, join the conversation—your questions, disagreements, insights and reflections are always welcome.