Donuts and Vineyards

Apr 4, 2023

When we were kids, my neighbor used to do garage sales every month.

Us kids saw an opportunity to piggyback off the foot traffic of their business, so we would buy donuts and make lemonade to sell out front of the house. My dad would go to the local donut shop and buy a box of donut holes, and we would sell them for 25 cents a pop. Besides, there’s no better business model than cute kids with a misspelled sign and the inability to break any bill larger than a dollar.

On one of these Saturdays, business was slow, and we were hungry. We walked inside at the end of a hard day's work with about six dollars of revenue and zero leftovers. Our entrepreneur dad gave us a high five for a hard day's work. My CPA mom then proceeded to inform us that the supplies for the sale cost twelve dollars, and we had to come up with the deficit. That was the day I learned what literally “eating your profits” meant. I also learned that day how many donut holes it takes to give an eight-year-old a stomach ache.

God has called you and me to work, to live a life that stewards our time and what we’ve been given well. But how do we know we are actually hitting the mark?

While there isn’t a step-by-step guide on how to manage your resources as a business owner, employee, creative, mom, dad, or boss, there is one key step we can take today to start ourselves on the right track.

In Luke chapter 20, Jesus paints a picture as he’s speaking to the religious leaders at the Temple.

He went on to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers, and went away for a long time. At harvest time, he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out. “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’ “But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’”

- Luke 20:9-14

Jesus continues to explain the purpose of the story…

Jesus looked directly at them and asked, “Then what is the meaning of that which is written: “‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

- Luke 20:17-18

You may have heard Jesus referred to as “the cornerstone” before. He is the foundation block of our faith and the gospel. Jesus is saying that we have two options as stewards of our time on earth and followers of Jesus.

We can fall on the stone or have the stone fall on us.

We can either fall onto Jesus and be broken by him in the best way, broken of our pride, our ego, our shame, our bitterness, our selfishness. Or we can white knuckle what we have and experience a much less pleasant outcome.

This Easter season is a powerful season. It’s a reminder that we can continue to die to ourselves, fall on the cornerstone in order to be broken from the parts of us that need refining, and experience new life.

We can stop worrying about how to hold everything together in our world and instead realize that, in our brokenness and weakness, Jesus is given the space to move and work in the powerful ways only He can.