Turning Water into Wine

All of a sudden nothing is right. My pants are too long or else they’re too tight. My hair won’t be tamed under my fingers in the humid weather. My face is pale.

What has caused such discontent? Why do I scream out? Why do I shed an interior tear that I am not more beautiful, more successful, more perfect, just more?

I don’t generally indulge in sweet drinks, like sodas, juices, cocktails, or coffee. I drink mostly water. The water is good, but sometimes I feel a thirst for wine.

Lord, it was at the wedding at Cana that the young lovers “ran out of wine.” What was that wine? Was it love? Was it prayer? Was it intimacy? Was it unity? There are so many things we run short of in our lives: patience, a sense of direction, hope, passion for what we do, physical health, friends, money, faith, and on and on. How often I run short of that wine in my relationship with Christ.

Yet, You offer the assurance that even when the wine runs out, You can turn water into wine. After all, You created the water. Your mother Mary noticed the need at the wedding at Cana. So she summoned you, “Look, son, they have no wine.” How compassionately she spoke those words. Her empathy was matched with confidence in the Lord and in what he could do. She knew He could provide.

At the mother’s bidding, Jesus requested the jars to be filled with water. Then, performing his first miracle, he changed the water to the finest, most delicate and intoxicating, fragrant wine!

“You have saved the best for last!” cried the headwaiter after he’d tasted it.

How good God is. God offers us the assurance that the best is yet to come.

“Do YOU believe the future is bigger than your past?” asked Matthew Kelly, inspirational speaker and author in his talk “Called to Joy.” Amazing talk. We must believe that the future is always bigger than the past. If you don’t, then what’s the point of pressing on? What’s the point of living for tomorrow?

The wine that never runs out is here, the Blood of Christ, poured out and so freely given to us. All who drink of it shall live. Christ’s first miracle was to quench the thirst of the guests at the wedding ceremony. Christ’s last miracle before he died was to quench the thirst of all humanity. As He said, “Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant. It will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28).

And my thirst, however great it may be, is answered by God’s greater thirst for me. He feels it much more intensely than any of us, and he expressed that longing when he hung on the cross. His cry to a fallen humanity: “I THIRST” (John 19:28).

Maybe by the same miracles, I can trust him to turn the water in my life into wine. The mundane and ordinary and even my poverty into rich drink and food that will sustain me.