From Raisins to Grapes

From Raisins to Grapes.

                As I was trimming my grapevines the other day I noticed a cluster of grapes that I had missed during the picking season. This single group had been left to hang in the hot September sun, untended and forgotten. The top of the cluster was still filled with nice plump fruit, but out toward the edges and farther down the grapes were withered and had dried on the vine, producing raisins. I trimmed off the cluster and held it in my hand and immediately I thought about the church.

                We are all grapes, whether plump and juicy or shriveled and dried, all of us are partakers of the same vine and all of us have value as we share in fellowship with one another. We are a unit of individuals who, when seen from the outside world, may look like a dysfunctional array of squandered opportunities. However, this is only so because they are looking through a lens that does not come from God and therefore value is given based on appearance and the ability to perform. Why waste time on a raisin, when a grape is so much more tasty?

When you go into a grocery store in search of grapes, they are not hard to find. They are out in front in the produce section next to the other more desirable, “fresh fruit.” They are specially displayed so that all can see, inspect and purchase. However, if you went in search of the raisins, they would found somewhere in the middle of the store, crammed into a box and set on a shelf between the prunes and the strawberry jam. In the world of supply and demand where value is placed solely on potential earning power, it is essential that top earners are seen.

But what happens when the church buys into this philosophy? Are we not all grapes (even though some are less desirable than others)? Does the Word tell us to put the weaker brethren on a shelf, out of the way where they won’t be noticed?

1 Corinthians 12:22-23 tells us, “…those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary:  And those members, which we think are less honorable, upon those we give more abundant honor…”

In other words, the raisins are just as necessary to the body as the grapes, they both have value in the kingdom, in fact, it is the grapes job to take a back seat in order to build up and restore the raisins to a place of honor. Not only that, but in the church, there are none greater than any other. All of us come in as dried raisins, empty and shriveled but God takes what the world sees as weak, fills it for his own glory and turns it into a grape.  

Brian Dodson