Thoughts On: John 2:1-12

Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water." And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast." So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now." This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

John 2:6-11, ESV

I have noticed lately how much I run out. I run out of groceries and I run out of motivation. I run out of hope and I run out of patience, and there always seems to be a moment where I run out of self-control. I run out of everything I try to muster up on my own. And I think that because I've lived in a world where we've all run out of something, and where there never seems to be quite enough, I began to think the same thing about God.

The lie is deep and it is branded into the earth we stand on: God is stingy. 

I can look back on my life and see how this lie has created my mindset. I tend to believe that there is little to go around. I believe that scarcity is the way it will always be - I even believed for some time that God would only ever let me live with less. I began to think that God did not want me to have anything, that he would belittle me for wanting anything more than a life in the desert. I wandered around that desert for years, thinking God's will had been proclaimed and I was stuck in those chains. 

But God's love isn't stingy. It never was. It is hard to understand because we've only ever known less than what we've wanted, but it's true, and nothing this world can dish out will ever change it: God is extravagant. 

God, living as a man on earth, allowed his first miracle to be one of fullness. He chose to restore what had run out. He turned scarcity into elaborate richness and flavor, and no one forced his hand. Jesus Christ decided to make his first miracle about the abundance of his glory, and I think that's what we needed to know first. It is wonderful to be healed, and it is marvelous to be redeemed - but first we needed to see: God is not a God of scarcity. He fills us to overflowing. 

No longer do we have to store up love and hope and peace so that we will have enough on our worst days. No longer do we need to feed ourselves to bursting because we don't know when we will be fed again. Never again will we need to doubt that there will be bread. God gives us more than enough, and he always will. He turned water into wine, and he turns the desert into abundant life.