Success is Failure Turned Inside Out

I’ve never known a person who matures from success alone.  Quite the contrary, for it’s in the throes of failure a contrast is drawn.  Failure is the fertilizer for personal & spiritual growth.  There’s a story shared in the vineyard which illustrates this …

A visitor noticed the vines with the marvelous clusters of plump, juicy grapes and remarked how those grapes must

make the best wine.  On the contrary, shared the vinedresser, those big grapes actually make the cheap wine that we ship out by the truckload.  No, he continued, it’s these grapes over here that make the most expensive wine.  He pointed to another field where the vines were withered, strained and produced only very small grapes.  They looked as if they were lingering between death and life.  The vinedresser showed the man how he packed up manure around the small but strong vines and how the stress of the elements, and even withholding water, produced some of the finest berries that would make some of the most expensive wine in the vineyard.

Ever feel like you’re small and insignificant, hovering between life and death some days with the manure of circumstances packed up around you?  Consider the phases a seed must follow before it produces fruit.  First it’s sown into the earth and dies.  Not just dormancy but death for the seed.  And death doesn’t look so good while the dying is going on.  Only then does the seed sprout and begin to grow.  First the stock, then the shoot, and then the fruit.  We have a saying that you never “go” into it you “grow” into it.  There’s the “growing into it” part of the process that can never be skipped.  Even nature teaches that the sprout doesn’t become a full-grown, fruit-producing tree overnight. It’s a maturing process that can take months and even years.  Maturity almost always involves failure at some level, because it’s only when we realize our limitations than we can acknowledge or admit them and move forward.  One of my favorite poems is one I committed to memory in college.  Click on the video link below…

http://poweredforlife.com/wp-content/uploads/markpoem2.flv