squeezed

Yesterday we picked grapes again at my in-laws.  The clusters had remained on the vine through two nights of frost, leaving them unusually sweet.  Today seemed the perfect time to make more grape jelly.

I washed the bunches and stripped the ripe grapes from the stems, dropping them into the cooking pot.

The next step was to stir, mash and crush the fruit.  As I began the smashing process I was reminded of a line from a devotional in My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers:

If we are ever going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed— you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.

sometimes everything in me

wants to scream

stop

no more pressure

God You will 

crush me beneath 

the weight of all this

then His voice an arrow

directly hits the mark

will you walk through

the pain

confess My hand 

at work here, now

as I squeeze, release

not just stirred, but shaken

I pause, breathe

and surrender again

Day 7 of 31 Days of Surrender

linking up at the pub where the poets meet