The Parable of the Pumpkin Vine

This is my pumpkin vine.  Last spring my classroom preschoolers and I planted some seeds in little cups. When school concluded in May, I had a 6 inch pumpkin vine.  I took it home and for lack of a garden plot, I planted it in the natural area beside my house and ignored it. That little pumpkin seed has grown into what at the latest measurement is a 30 foot pumpkin vine producing over 50 blossoms.  It is absolutely beautiful. However as fast as it is growing, death seems determined to catch up with it.  I noticed over a month ago that the leaves near the root were developing spots and withering away.  I tried several different sprays until I was informed that my pumpkin, due to our extremely wet summer, most likely had root rot and that there was nothing I could do about it. 

The bottom of this picture is where the pumpkin was planted.
Leaves have withered to about 2/3rds of the way up on this picture.

The crazy thing is that at the time the root rot was diagnosed the vine was probably only about fifteen feet long. It is doomed and yet it keeps just on going and going and going.  I have been extremely sad about my pumpkin vine.  I was SO excited to harvest pumpkins from the seed planted by my little preschool class. Every time I look at it, I get this sinking feeling.  Jonah and his anger over the withered vine keeps flashing in my head. Believing that God waste nothing, I have been trying to figure out the parable of my pumpkin vine. I have been looking for some message for the lost that I could share with others.  The other day as I was feeling frazzled by all I was trying to do and all I felt like I couldn't get done, God reminded me of my pumpkin vine.  I have been spinning my wheels trying to do this, accomplish that, and please this one or another all in my strength and hard work.  I acknowledge God with my arrow prayers but seldom stop to meditate, read scripture or ask for wisdom and strength regarding this "to do list" of mine.  I wine and complain, feeling this bitterness creeping in.  I have this appearance of being very busy and productive.  Yet root rot is eating at it to the point that I fear the fruit of my labor will all be for nothing.  All that I do in my own strength, produces what? A withered vine. I can't say that things have changed but I have been challenged.  If I grieve over a withering pumpkin vine should I not grieve over my own effort to produce something that cannot be, without the power, strength and life of Christ surging through it.