The disappointment is tremendous. You sit and think about the hours, and days, and years of work you have done, the callouses on your hands from the sawing and sanding, your dreams for the future, your garden, your very own garden. And you collapse in a heap and cry and cry. For this is no boxed supermarket grape juice. You can't go back and buy another one, vineyards aren't like cartons of grape juice. Anyway the vineyard has taken every penny you had and every ounce of your strength and energy. Later though, you dry off your eyes, wash your face, and are determined to find some explanation. Why has it all gone so wrong? And so you spend hours scouring the library and the web looking for an answer. But when you find it, it depresses you still more. For the land you bought was sited a little too near a chemical factory a few decades ago. The land is poisoned, and with it all your hopes of a harvest forever. And as you sit, and stare at the report you have found in the library, you remember echoes of something else from the past, a long forgotten old-testament tale they told you at school. Of God, who called Israel his vineyard and Judah his vines. God who tended them through history, spending millions of years nurturing a planet to place them in, then finally breathing life into them when the time was right. God tending them and teaching them, and having them turn their backs on him, murder and hate. Hearing their victims cries for justice. Of God's despair over the way his people have turned out. And you bury your head in your hands and cry once more, but this time you cry for other poisoned vines. You cry for the children in Afghanistan whose homes have been destroyed, you cry for the lost potential of those who have died of Aids in South Africa, you weep for Israel, and the vineyards that have become warzones. You cry for every dream that has ever been destroyed by robbers and vandals. And your cry becomes a prayer. For mercy. For a chance to rebuild this broken world.