Good morning…
I woke this morning with a verse saturating my mind. I got out of bed, went to my Bible, and searched for the verse. Here’s what I found. “No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the [fermenting] wine will [expand and] burst the skins, and the wine is lost as well as the wineskins. But new wine must be put into new wineskins,” warns Jesus in Mark 2:22 (AMP).
God, why this verse? Why this verse today?
I slowly breathe into an evolving answer.
I sense we are at a crossroads as we try to get our bearings, living with coronavirus, growing more aware of real racial injustice, struggling through economic instability, and seeing large numbers of raging wildfires and horrendous hurricanes shouting, shouting for our attention. This dynamic time in human history is stretching us out of old comfort zones, challenging our ability to love God first and fully, to love others well as we learn to love ourselves (Luke 10:27), and to provide loving care for God’s fertile creation, which is why we were given breath in the first place. The Eternal God placed the newly made man in the garden of Eden in order to work the ground and care for it (Genesis 2:15, VOICE). Somehow it feels like we are becoming newly made people as we venture out from the stifling safety of our own homes. Will we work hard with the Gardener to tenderly care for the whole world?
This morning, we wake up into a core question. As we reestablish our daily rhythms, will we try to shove the fermenting, expansive love of Jesus back into old, rigid wineskins, wineskins which have shrunken down and hardened like the glove of O.J. Simpson?
If it don’t fit, we must submit.
I sense in my soul, shoving ourselves back into old neat tidy boxes is not God’s regenerative plan. Jesus does not say, “Recondition your old wine skins, clean them, soak them in oil until they are rejuvenated, supple, and soft enough to welcome my new wine.”
No, Jesus says, “My new wine must be put into new wineskins.”
Think with me, “What would it mean for God to form new wineskins out of our ordinary lives, as we welcome anew the expanding, fermenting, transformative love of God?” Trying to shove ourselves back into old, outdated containers does not honor all we have felt, all we have seen, all we have experienced together in 2020.
Will we let God make for us new patterns of living or will we adamantly try to return to “what used to be”? If we do not lay down old habits to pick up expansive new ones, we will rip ourselves apart at the seams, wasting God’s good, gracious wine.
A new heart will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26, AMPC).
Are we willing to allow God to take away hardened beliefs forming stones in our hearts? Will we receive from our Lord a new heart of flesh and a new spirit of love, being filled with God’s new wine as it expands through us to transform every living cell?
…Sue…
P.S. Thank you, Corinne Adams, for your life-giving photos. How deeply they touch our soul.
