Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: EXPRESSION (11/12/20)
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TITLE: A Happy Expression – in More Ways than One | Previous Challenge Entry
By Bruce Phenix
11/17/20 -
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He began by digging the little plot with a mattock and clearing it of the stones that littered the soil.
Next, he created a few terraces on the slope, using the stones he’d removed to make a retaining wall along the edge of each one.
Then he dug a ditch around the boundary of the plot and used the soil he’d dug out to make a low wall on the inner side of the ditch. On top of this earth wall he planted a hedge of buckthorn to keep out wild animals.
Below the terraces he dug two holes, a larger one on a higher level and a smaller one on a lower level. By lining these holes - and a connecting channel between them - with stone, plastered to make it watertight, he made a winepress: the bath above, the vat below.
He planted his grapevines about twelve feet apart on the terraces, and as they grew he supported them on forked sticks. He used a small pruning hook to get rid of any weak or broken branches during the winter months.
In preparation for his first grape harvest, the man built a stone watchtower with a small summerhouse on top. The summerhouse was really just a roof of leafy branches woven together, supported on rough posts.
In July, the man and his wife and children all moved to the vineyard and stayed in the little summerhouse while they were picking the grapes. What an adventure for the children!
There was joy and laughter as they brought the grapes down from the terraces in huge baskets. Some of the grapes were laid out to dry as raisins in a corner of the vineyard, where they were turned each day and sprinkled with olive oil. Some found their way into the children’s mouths. Most were emptied into the bath of the winepress. But plenty of grapes were left on the vines for any stranger in need – the poor person, the alien in the land, the widow, the orphan – because, the man reminded his children, the Israelites had all been slaves in Egypt once, before God redeemed them and planted them like his own vine in the fertile land of Canaan.
All the family crowded into the bath of the winepress to tread the grapes with their bare feet, singing songs as they did so. The juice was expressed – squeezed out – and flowed into the vat below.
Although, later on, the God-fearing man and his family experienced sorrows as well as joys, bad harvests as well as good, he continued to count his blessings. He never forgot that first grape harvest with its happy expression of the sweet juice; and the thought of it always restored his own happy expression.
“A glad heart makes a cheerful countenance.” (Proverbs 15:13)
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