Daily Journal: 28 August

There’s Still Some Juice Left

If you have a cluster of grapes, and you find some bad grapes amongst the good grapes, do you throw the whole cluster away? Or do you remove the bad grapes, and enjoy the juice from the remaining good grapes?

Isaiah 65: 8 (NKJV)

Thus says the Lord: “As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one says, ‘Do not destroy it, for a blessing is in it,’ so will I do for My servants’ sake, that I may not destroy them all.

Other translations clarify that this saying refers to when some in a cluster of grapes are good and some in a cluster are bad. But caution is given not to destroy the whole cluster. If there was goodness, the good grapes needed to be saved because blessing could still be found from those.

This is what life is like and it’s how God operates. He will take from what is bad, and bring out the parts that are still good. We can be squeezed and crushed, but if there’s still some juice left, we will be able to drink from the goodness of what’s left and be sustained and blessed by it.

The Lord is faithful and causes those who search to be fruitful no matter the bad circumstances around us. God gives those who search a firm place in His sanctuary, He gives light to our eyes and relief in tough seasons (Ezra 9). If we search for His goodness we will find it and it will be useful for ourselves and others.

Isaiah 65:10 (GWT)

The Sharon Plain will be a pasture for flocks. The Achor Valley will be a resting place for cattle and for my people who search for me.

The Plain of Sharon was an open woodland of oak, used for pasture and cultivation. It lies between the coast and hill country and is known as a fertile plain that was also an ancient trade route, so communities developed amongst it.

The Achor Valley is in the area of Jericho and, biblically, began with trouble. But in the books of Isaiah and Hosea, the Achor Valley becomes the beautiful picture of a place for herds to rest and a door of hope for restoration.

God gives those who search for Him the promise that after a time of trouble, we will find hope, rest and restoration.

God’s heart is not that we are destroyed from the troubles in life, but that even through the pressing, like a cluster of grapes we can see there’s still some juice left after those experiences, and that juice will be used for replenishment. There is still a blessing in it.