Daily Devotion

Selection Taken From:
A Year with God by R.P. Nettelhorst

Make this the year you let God's Word "dwell in you richly"---and marvel at the results! Each entry in this 365-day devotional features Scripture verses in which God speaks, accompanied by insights and applications to enhance your understanding. Learn what God says about hope and fear; perseverance and quitting; companionship and isolation; and more! 384 pages, softcover from Nelson, Copyright 2010.


God's Love Song
I'll sing a ballad to the one I love, a love ballad about his vineyard:
The one I love had a vineyard,
a fine, well-placed vineyard. He hoed the soil and pulled the weeds, and planted the very best vines.
He built a lookout, built a winepress, a vineyard to be proud of.
He looked for a vintage yield of grapes, but for all his pains he got junk grapes.
"Now listen to what I'm telling you, you who live in Jerusalem and Judah.
What do you think is going on between me and my vineyard?
Can you think of anything I could have done to my vineyard that I didn't do?
When I expected good grapes, why did I get bitter grapes?" - Isaiah 5:1-5 MSG

Unrequited love is unfulfilling. It is more painful than simple loneliness. But God is more familiar with unrequited love than any other kind. Sometimes God illustrated his messages by having his prophet perform an unusual action. In this passage, God told a parable. God pictured Israel as a carefully tended and protected vineyard. But despite all the efforts of the farmer, the vineyard yielded little but bitter grapes that were good for nothing.

It wasn't the farmer's fault that the vineyard was so bad. There was nothing more that the famer could have done. He did everything right; everything perfectly. He could have done nothing any better.

The point of God's parable was simple: Israel was without excuse. God was not demanding that they love him in the face of unrelenting misery. He did not ask them to return good for the evil being heaped upon them. He made it easy. He gave them anything they needed or asked for. He gave them everything and made them prosper. And what did God get back?

Most people respond to good gifts with at least a thank-you. They feel obligated to the person who has treated them well. But that wasn't so with God's people. The nicer he was to them, the worse they treated him. Like a bad vineyard, they gave him stuff that wouldn't even make good vinegar.

Despite the misery and evil Israel gave God, he always and forever did—and continued to do—what was good for them. God's love isn't dependent upon the actions of the ones he loves.