The second installment of our e-book “Wake Up Stories for Adults” is ready for you. “Are You Really God’s Son?” Look to the right side of this page and click on E-book.
I’m learning to be a grape grower. All that I need to begin my business is three-quarters of a million dollars (probably more) to buy a vineyard, then the know-how to know what I’m doing.
Just that.
Our village is etched into the side of a high, high hill (or a small mountain) et grapevine crawl up the steep sides toward us from the Marne river valley at the bottom. Grapevines cover a large portion of the hills facing us.
I’m sure that I don’t have the time nor the money (nor the desire) to begin a grape-growing business, but my neighbors and friends are teaching me some interesting things.
One day my wife asked me why you often see rose plant at the end of a row of grapevines. I had noticed them too, but I thought they were there to be beautiful. The French like beautiful things.
But, beauty isn’t the first consideration.
Roses are very susceptible to disease and if there’s a sickness that threatens the vines, you’ll see the black spots show up first on the roses. When the grape grower sees that the rose is sick, he treats his grapevines to protect them from the sickness.
The rose catches it first.
That’s what Jesus did for us, isn’t it? He took our sicknesses so that we could be healed. But, in this case it’s as if all the grapevines threw their sickness on the rose, and the rose died from all that—in the place of all the grapevines.
« God made him who had no sin to be sin[a] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor. 5:21, NIV)
The rose died so that the vine might live and produce fruit. Jesus died to destroy the sickness of sin in our lives and to give us new life.
If you haven’t come to the Lord Jesus to ask forgiveness for this “sickness”of sin, do it now. If you’ve done it, stop a moment and thank God because he got sick because of our sickness.
There’s a Rose at the end of the row of grapevines.
________
Hmmm…
“No other God has wounds.” Oz Guiness