Cultivated Ground. How God was preparing the ground long before our Indianapolis winery existed.

"A farmer went out to sow his seed... Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop — a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown." - Matthew 13:3-8

The Farmer Was Already Working

There is a version of our story that starts with grapevines, wine glasses, and a dream come true. That version is real, and we are genuinely grateful for it every single day. But it is not where the story begins.

The story begins in a field that needed work.

When Jesus told the parable of the sower, he described four kinds of soil — the hard-packed path, the rocky ground, the thorny ground, and the good soil. The difference between them was not the seed. The seed was the same in every case. The difference was how prepared the ground was to receive it.

Looking back on our lives now, Frances and I can see that God had been cultivating our ground for years before we had any idea He was doing it. Long before we would have called ourselves people of faith. Long before The Rejoicing Vine existed. Long before the crisis that finally broke everything open.

He was working the whole time. We just could not see it yet.

Rocky Ground

I grew up attending church, albeit sporadically. Enough to leave a small impression, a surface layer of rich top soil. Not enough to overcome my desire to challenge conventions, innovate, and improve old ways of doing things. So in college I left that identity behind.

Then came the years of building a career, a marriage, a family, and a life. And here is the honest part: we were genuinely growing things. Real things, good things. Frances and I were not directionless or reckless. We had close friendships, strong family bonds, and real energy for life. Our careers were producing results. We traveled, we gathered around good food and good wine, we pursued the kind of life that looks, from the outside, like it is working.

And in many ways it was. The plants were growing. They looked healthy. They may have even looked promising.

But the roots were shallow.

Jesus describes this soil in the parable as ground with rock just beneath the surface. Seeds spring up quickly there because the topsoil is fine. But when the heat arrives, the plants wither fast because they never had anywhere deep to go. There was no reservoir to draw from when things got hard.

Looking back now, I know that was us. Our careers, our friendships, our pursuit of achievement and pleasure and the good life — none of those things were bad. The topsoil was good but it wasn't deep enough.

We had built a life that was full and busy and forward-moving, and we had never had to find out how deep our foundations actually went.

Then we found out.

The Phone Call That Stopped Everything

Our first child had recently been born and we were finding our footing as a new family when everything changed without warning. In parable language, the sun turned scorching.

That morning I had a major meeting at work. The type of project meeting where people fly in internationally and we lock ourselves in a conference room until we solve the major problems holding our project back. The kind of meeting that feels genuinely VERY important in the moment. The meeting was 2 hours away so I was up early. Like most mornings I fed our smiley son a bottle. He was always such a happy, content, baby. Kissed the family good bye and hit the road.

Several hours later, in the corporate conference room, working through the agenda when my phone rang. Something nudged me to check it instead of letting it go to voicemail. It was our daycare. Strange, they hadn't ever called.

"Excuse me. I need to take this." I stepped into the hallway.

The voice on the other end was familiar but the panic underneath it was not. The words were ordinary. What they meant was not. Our son had become completely unresponsive and needed to get to a hospital immediately.

A wave of adrenaline hit that made all the coffee I had been drinking that morning seem infinitesimally weak. In an instant the meeting, the project, the agenda, the international colleagues — all of it became utterly meaningless. I ran out the door leaving everything behind. The drive back was a blur. The next seven days were spent sleepless in the hospital, our son clinging to life, the two of us clinging to each other, and both of us wrestling with questions we had no answers for. Questions no amount of effort or intelligence could solve. The sun's heat was scorching.

Cultivated Ground - Depth for Our Indianapolis Winery

He recovered. He came home. And then the slower, quieter season began.

I left my career to stay home and care for our son. I won't pretend that was a peaceful transition. I had built my identity on my work, on more than a decade of education and professional achievement, and now it was gone. I fell into a deep depression over our situation. The heat felt relentless. It felt like my life was withering.

The crisis had not just shaken us. It had exposed us. Everything we had been growing our sense of purpose, our confidence, our vision of the future had depended on conditions staying favorable. The moment they did not, we had nothing to draw from. The rock was right there, just beneath the surface, exactly where it had always been.

But here is what I have come to understand about rocky ground: the rock is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of the real work. Because once you know where the rock is, you know what needs to be broken up before anything of depth can grow.

It was in that exposed, humbled, directionless season that something unexpected began to stir. With time on my hands and a genuine need to do something with it, I started gardening. Getting my hands into the soil, watching things grow, learning the rhythms of planting and harvest — it reconnected me to something I had not realized I had lost. The garden became a lifeline.

One season we harvested forty pounds of grapes. Far more than we could ever eat. So I taught myself to make wine. And somewhere in that slow, patient process of watching something transform over time into something good, I felt for the first time in years like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

I did not fully understand it then. But the ground was being prepared in a way it never had been before. Something was breaking up the rock.

The Seed Finally Finds Good Soil

It was around this time that our neighbor mentioned his church. I was hesitant. My scientific background had long since crowded out any serious consideration of God, and I had seen too much hate and injustice carried out in the name of Christianity to be eager to step back in. But he mentioned there was an online option, and one quiet afternoon while our son napped I sat down and started watching.

I was not prepared for what happened. It felt as if every single sermon had been written for me personally. I started with a series on the life of Joseph. I thought, cool, I don't know much about Jesus' dad. Well...I soon learned there was more than one Joseph in the Bible. 🤯

If that surprised you as well I encourage you to check out the book of Genesis. His story starts in Chapter 37. Joseph faces hardship after hardship. At a young age Joseph is sold into slavery by his own brothers, then he is wrongly imprisoned, forgotten, and finally becomes second in command of the world's top nation. He is used by God in ways nobody could have predicted to save an entire region from famine. His story reached through the screen and grabbed hold of me. The verse at the center of it has never left:

"You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done." — Genesis 50:20

Joseph did not know, in the pit, what the pit was for. He did not know, in prison, what the prison was preparing him for. He only knew afterward, looking back, that nothing had been wasted. Not a single hard thing.

I thought about the hospital. The career I had lost. The depression. The garden. The grapes. The wine.

What if the farmer had known what He was doing the whole time? The underlying rock broke into pieces making room for deeper roots.

Looking Back on the Field

Within a few months of that first online sermon Frances and I were attending church in person. Within a year we were baptized. Soon I became one of the first ministry associates our church had ever had, serving the community, deepening our roots.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, the calling to open a winery came into focus. Not in spite of everything we had been through, but because of it. The career loss had sent me home. Being home had sent me to the garden. The garden had given me grapes. The grapes had given me wine. And the wine, and the community it could create and the life it could cultivate, had given us a mission.

The rock had been broken up. The ground had been deepened. The seed had finally found soil with somewhere to go.

Looking back now, Romans 8:28 feels less like a comfort verse and more like a precise description of what actually happened:

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." — Romans 8:28

All things. Not some things. Not the easy things or the things that made sense at the time. All of them. The crisis. The lost career. The depression. The sleepless nights. The shattered identity. Every last bit of it was being worked, quietly and patiently, toward something we could not see yet.

The Rejoicing Vine is a seed that has sprouted in this reworked soil. A seed we pray will give a crop of 100, 60, or even 30 times what has been sown. Not in money, awards, or accomplishments but in lives changed.

This Is Only Part of the Story

There is so much more to tell. About how our faith took root and grew. About Isaiah 55 and the invitation that named our winery and inspired our Happiest Hour events. About wine in the Bible. About the morning when God used a wedding to make it unmistakably clear that we were supposed to make wine in Indianapolis.

But we wanted this to be one of our first posts. Where it started. In the field. Long before the harvest. Because we think a lot of you know what this season feels like.

Maybe you are in a season right now that does not make sense. Maybe something you built your identity on has been taken away. Maybe you are discovering that the roots you thought you had do not go as deep as you believed. Maybe you are sitting in a kind of wilderness you did not ask for and cannot work your way out of.

If so, you are not alone. And if Joseph's story taught us anything, it is that the pit is never the end of the story. Sometimes it is exactly where the story needed to begin.

The farmer knows what He is doing. Even when the field does not.

What About You?

We share these stories not because we have it all figured out, but because we believe there is something powerful about knowing you are not alone in the hard seasons. If this resonated with you, if you are in a season of rocky ground, find yourself surrounded by thistles right now or if you have come out the other side of one, we would love to hear from you.

And if you are curious about the faith that quietly underpins everything we do at The Rejoicing Vine, we would love to share more of that in person. One of our favorite things we do is The Happiest Hour, a free event inspired directly by Isaiah 55, where we offer free wine and milk exactly as the chapter describes. No strings. No agenda. Just community, generosity, and a good glass of something worth savoring.

At The Rejoicing Vine, we believe the best things grow in cultivated ground. We would love for you to come experience that with us.

Come find us at our Indianapolis winery, join us for The Happiest Hour, or sign up for our newsletter to follow along as we share more of this story, including what happened when we finally heard the call that started it all.