As you sit watching a travel show, or whilst holidaying have you taken a tour of a vineyard, and dreamt of planting and owning your own vineyard? Does the dream involve sitting around on a sunny day tasting the wine, admiring the view?
Let me give you a little reality check. Once you’ve purchased the land, prepared the soil, planted the vines, watered them, pruned them etc etc. it will take 3-5 years before you start producing enough grapes to even make it worth making any wine and it’s not until 7-10 years that your vines reach maturity! So if you’re going to see that dream become a reality, you’d better be ready for a lot of hard work, a lot of waiting, to be 10 years older and probably a few pounds heavier!
Now that I’ve shattered your dreams and depressed you, you may be wondering why? Well, I was reading the story of the first miracle Jesus performed, while he was at the wedding in Cana. Jesus managed to bypass the 10+ year wait, all the hard work and managed to produced a vintage, award winning wine (John 2:1-11).
Jesus’ mother knew that He was the only person, who could by-pass time. He’s the only one who is able to redeem time, the only one who is able to restore what the enemy took away. I was reminded of 2 scriptures, Genesis 50:20, when Joseph says to his brothers “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” And in Joel 2:25 “I’ll make up for the years of the locust, the great locust devastation.” We were given the Joel verse around 8 years ago as part of a prophetic word, we’d thought it referred to things that had happened in our past, but now we’re left wondering if it is talking about this period of waiting and what is to come. Though it can often appear to be a wasted time, a desolate period, where we have lost so much, when we look back on this past 5 years we can see how God has been maturing and developing us.
Getting back to the wedding. Mary’s instructions to the servants is to “do what he tells you to do.” We’re not told exactly when the water was turned into wine, but if it had been before they drew the water out of the jar to take to the master of ceremonies, they’d have been shocked and amazed and excitedly shared what had happened with everyone. The miracle appears to have been when it was poured out. It happened suddenly!
The lessons for Time2 (and also for you):
- Do what he tells you to do!
- You need faith to fill the jars!
- You need faith to draw the water and take it to the master of ceremonies!
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