Wine, Anyone?

Have you ever thought about the first miracle that Jesus performed? I mean really thought about it.  We all know the story.  Jesus is at a wedding reception and the host runs out of wine.  So Jesus takes water and turns it into wine.  And not just everyday, cheap, wine out of a box, but the best, highest quality wine.  The whole story is in John 2, so if you want to read it, that's where to go.  But I don't want to tell the whole story.  I just want to talk about the miracle.

I don't believe that Jesus ever did anything by chance or without a specific purpose.  So why did Jesus choose turning water into wine at a wedding reception as his first miracle? I mean, after all, this is the man who healed the blind with dirt and spit, stuck his fingers in a deaf man's ears and brought hearing, spoke into a tomb and raised a dead-for-days man from the dead.  Why weren't any of those first? Why was something as seemingly insignificant as wedding wine the first miracle? It's not like Jesus, the Son of God, had to "work up" to something big.  He didn't need to practice a "small" thing or two before moving on to the bigger stuff.

So why? Why wedding wine? Here's what I think.  We don't often in life need the raising-from-the-dead kind of miracle.  Sometimes we need the healing-the-deaf-and-blind kind of miracles.  But most often in life, we need those water-into-wine kind of miracles.  The ones that we ask for in everyday life.  The ones that, if they don't happen, won't have lifelong or life altering effects.  But when they do happen, remind us that Jesus, with all that is lifted to him in prayer, cares about the littlest and most insignificant of our details.

Those water-into-wine kind of miracles are the ones that build our faith, shape our lives and bring us growth.  Those water-into-wine kind of miracles give us tangible things that a skeptical world can find belief in.  Those water-into-wine kind of miracles are the ones that sustain us when we're waiting for the raising-from-the-dead kind of miracle.  Those are the ones that Jesus uses to say, "Be still.  I've got this.  See all of these little things that I've done for you? If I care about those, how much more do I care about this mountain standing in your way? How much more do I care about speaking life into your circumstance? Trust me!"

That story of that first miracle has so much more significance to me now.  Now, when I'm facing the mountain, when the seemingly hopeless circumstance disrupts my life, I think about wine at a wedding.  And I remember that if Jesus cares about that, then my mountain will be moved.