Come Play With Me

The wedding at Cana  was a time of celebration, a time of toasting, a time of new beginnings, both between a man and a woman, and between heaven and earth.  At this beautiful and lavish event Jesus even spoke of it in terms of time. One moment He responded to His mother, “my time has not yet come,” but only a few heartbeats later He heard a holy cue and stepped right into the call.   

The miracle of water being turned into wine, reveals a reality of our God—that He is not bound by either a clock or a calendar.  He had already promised things to His people like returning the years the locusts had eaten, and showed things like bringing a few dead bodies, and a pile of dry bones back to life.  Those were pretty strong messages that  He was more than able to work with our past. But now He seemed to be making quite a statement about having rule over the future too. 

Normally, water flows down into the ground, and the roots of the grape vines slowly drink up its goodness. The plant does it beautiful growing process, and grapes slowly form, then little by little, begin to bulge with heaviness.  A harvester gathers the clusters of ripened fruit and sets them on the slow road to fermentation.  It will be many days later, that a Father can uncork the bottles, fill the glasses, and offer toasts to new brides and grooms.

But it wasn’t like that here.  Not at this wedding.  Not with this guest.  Jesus unknowingly arrived with quite a gift.  He apparently didn’t come with the knowledge that He was about to make this one of the best weddings on record.  Obedience allows surprises like that.  We just never know what opportunity will be in our day when we carry obedience in our pocket, ready to be plucked out at a moment’s notice and used as He weaves us through life, the warp of need and weft of provision and joy intersecting at unexpected turns. 

At Cana He offered the groom and his bride six large containers of wine.  And He offered us, in the same expression, a Kingdom we haven’t earned and fruit that someone else had farmed in some heavenly garden.  Jesus just had to hear well, and then receive what was being sent His way to release on earth in this moment.  Our opportunities come exactly the same way.

Believing brings us to the door.  Obedience is the key to its unlocking.  Joy is the anticipation of what He will do as He walks with us through it, Him holding the bundle, but needing us to hand it out.  Our work on earth is not to create the wine He offers.  He has done all the labor and invites us in to share the delight of seeing the results of it and also being colored by what we experience in the giving.  That part is a gift too. He did the blood, sweat, and tears, then steps back and lets us serve it.