Five summer Sundays under a backyard grapevine, and what they reveal about the life the Spirit grows.
For five Sundays that summer, our church gathered outside beneath a real grapevine, a living canopy over our heads. An old fountain chuckled. Butterflies sipped at the milkweed. Birds cut through the air, unbothered by the people who had wandered into their world.
We sat on benches and scattered chairs around a wooden table. Above us, grapes hung in clusters of jewels. Of all the places to talk about the fruit of the Spirit, we couldn’t have picked a lovelier one.
Five weeks later, the grapes had grown and matured. So had we.
A Summer Under the Vine is the story of what we discovered as we learned the kind of life that grows when we stop trying harder and learn to stay connected to the vine.
Love · Joy · Peace · Patience · Kindness · Goodness · Faithfulness · Gentleness · Self-Control
4Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
John 15:4–5 (ESV)
Author Bio
Michael Kulwiec has taught Scripture for more than forty years in youth rooms and small groups, at camps and conferences, and in churches. He spent two decades as a youth pastor and has always believed that truth travels farthest when it travels as a story. He
is also the author of the middle-grade adventure novel Island of the Angry Smile. A Summer Under the Vine grew out of a five-week summer teaching series in his backyard, beneath a real grapevine, alongside his wife, Pam. they live in San Diego, California, where
neighborhood kids still stop by for a chat and a gummy or two.
