248 The Vineyard After the Storm

On Questions, Quiet, and Who Really Owns the Land

May 26, 2026

It is 7:52 AM on the Tuesday after Memorial Day.

The house is quiet, but not empty. My father is here. My niece is here. Our dog, Wiggles, is here. The silence I was hoping for to write this has been gently, persistently, filled with the living. It is a good filling. A holy interruption. But it means my stream of thought, my line to the deep water, has been broken. Let’s try to get back to it, shall we?

These last few days, my heart and mind have been heavily distracted from the Father. I have not been able to keep my mind fixed on Him. My Bible reads have been skims. My prayers have been fractured phrases, launched like emergency flares into a noisy sky. The world has been loud with questions.

What are you going to do next?

Are you staying or going somewhere else?
Are you going back to PA?
What are my sisters and I going to do about the house?

The list could go on for pages.

These questions come to me from others, and sometimes from myself. They come from a place of self-interest. Other times, from a place of concern and love. In either case, there are usually two answers: the one that is spoken, and the one that is thought.

The spoken one depends on the asker. It is measured, practical, often vague. It lives in the currency of this world, plans, logistics, finances.

The thought-one is always the same. It is the quiet heartbeat beneath the noise: “I will go when and where the Father asks.”

I am reminded of an encounter. Years ago, before I knew God as I do now, before I believed in angels, one spoke to me in a dream. The message was simple: “Things are going to get hard. Life will be difficult. But the Father will have me reveal to myself whether I truly believe the things I’ve said in my prayers.”

The irony is, I wasn’t praying then. Not really. He was preparing me for a faith I did not yet have. For prayers I had not yet learned to mean.

Now, in this season where every prayer is a gasp for direction, that promise echoes. The test is not the difficulty; the test is whether I believe my own whispered trust. The problem is, I can rarely speak the true answer aloud. “I will go when and where the Father asks.” Most people in my orbit range from atheist to comfortable Christianity at best. They would either outright reject that answer or hear it as a pious metaphor, a spiritual placeholder for a real plan.

Today, society returns to the grind. To mortgages, rent, car payments, tuitions. The flavor of that grinding varies, but at its core, it’s all the same. We are trading our time on this earth to secure and obtain the shiny things of man’s empire. This is not a judgment. I see the twig in my brother’s eye only because I am painfully aware of the log in my own. I’ve been there. I am, in many ways, still there. The bills still come. Taxes must be paid. Calls must be answered.

But something has shifted. The me of today no longer values those worldly commitments in the same way. I know which moments of my day are the most important. They are not the hours that pay me in the currency of this age. They are the moments that pay in the currency of the Kingdom. Eternally.

These “Kingdom moments”… they always look like service. Like love. Like patience. Like being still with the Lord. They are a stark contrast to the frantic, acquisitive energy of the empire’s clock. They are relatively easy to recognize, not by their ease, but by their texture. They feel like surrender, not striving.

So, what does my first “work day” absent of the role of caregiving look like?

It is too soon to say. It is only 8:37 in the morning.

Perhaps that will be tomorrow’s journal entry.

This next part may seem disconnected. But a parable has been walking with me for days. I’ve been turning it over in the quiet spaces between the questions. I write it here to see what the Spirit intends for me to receive from my awareness of it.

It is the Parable of the Wicked Tenants.

“Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country…”

You know the story. The master sends servants for his fruit. The tenants beat one, kill another, stone another. He sends more; they do the same. Finally, he sends his son, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But the tenants see the son and say, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ So they throw him out of the vineyard and kill him.

Jesus asks the religious leaders listening: “When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

They reply, correctly, grimly: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”

Then Jesus quotes Psalm 118: “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone…’ Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.”

And the chief priests and Pharisees perceived He was speaking about them.

This parable has haunted me. It explains why the Kingdom would be taken from them and given to others. It connects directly to the journey of moving beyond institutional religion to a direct, obedient relationship with the Father and the Son.

But today, in this quiet house on a Tuesday after a holiday, it speaks to me differently.

I am not a chief priest. I am not a Pharisee. But I am a tenant.

The vineyard is my life. My time. My gifts. My relationships. This very house. My “what’s next.” The master planted it. He put a fence around it. He dug a winepress in it. He built a tower. He did the work of establishment. Then He leased it to me. He went into another country, but He retains all ownership.

And He expects fruit.

The questions buzzing in my mind, “What will you do? Where will you go?” are not just questions. They are the chatter of a tenant trying to figure out how to run the vineyard for his own benefit. How to secure the inheritance. How to claim ownership of a leasehold.

But the vineyard is not mine. The plan is not mine. The “what’s next” is not my intellectual property to devise.

My only job is to recognize the Son when He comes. To respect the Heir. To give the Father His fruit when He sends for it.

The wicked tenants made a fatal error: they thought killing the son meant the inheritance would be theirs. They confused stewardship with ownership. They thought the vineyard existed for their benefit, their security, their legacy.

We do the same. We look at our lives, our careers, our homes, our plans and we scheme how to secure our inheritance. We trade our time for the shiny things of the empire, forgetting we are just tenants. Forgetful stewards.

The grinding return to work this Tuesday is the sound of a thousand tenants hustling for an inheritance that was never theirs to seize.

My distraction these past days, my inability to pray, is the symptom of a tenant’s anxiety. I have been looking at the vines, the fence, the tower, and asking, “What do I do with this?” Instead of, “Master, what fruit do You want from this?”

The answer to every question…“What’s next? Stay or go?” is not a five-year plan. It is a posture: I am a tenant. The Son is the Heir. I will give the fruit to the Father when He asks for it.

The Kingdom was taken from the original tenants and given to others because they rejected the Son and coveted the inheritance. The Kingdom is given to those who recognize the Son, honor the Father, and faithfully tend the vineyard for Him.

So today, my first “work day” after caregiving, my only task is to remember who owns the vineyard. To listen not for the world’s questions, but for the Master’s request for His fruit. And to be ready, when the Son appears in my midst, to welcome Him, not as a threat to my tenancy, but as the rightful Heir to it all.

The rest is just noise.

Walk in that truth today, friends. You are a steward, not an owner. And that is the most freeing news of all.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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