Journal Entry ~ 10/27/18

This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him. - John 2:11

So many of us are praying for a miracle in our lives...for a prodigal child to come home, the healing of an illness or a heartache, financial relief. And when you’ve been praying for a long time for the same miracle, it’s easy to grow discouraged. If God can do it, why isn’t He?  My heart has longed to see Him show up in the lives of my loved ones, but I continue to wait. There are days when I feel like it’s never going to happen. In those despairing moments, I’m thankful for stories like this one in scripture to remind me that He is the God of miracles. I know it is only the discrepancy between what I understand and what He knows that causes my anxiety to rise.  Leaning in to these stories and pulling from them everything He has for me provides that supernatural peace to my soul, and it increases my faith and my patience to wait on His timing. 

One thing I find interesting is how Jesus brought about the miracle at this wedding. We all know He could have just made wine appear in the hands of all the guests without any effort, but He didn’t. Why not?  Instead He asked the servants to fill the jars with water. 

Pausing on this for a moment, think of the labor involved in filling these large stone jars.  These were the pots they used for ceremonial washing, and each one held between 20 and 30 gallons - and there were 6 of them!  That’s a lot of water!  Remember, water wasn’t easy to come by back then, so you could just turn on a hose and wait for them to fill. Water came from a well. So each jar had to be filled by pulling up and carrying a bucket of water. How many buckets do you suppose it took for one jar to be filled?  How close do you think they were to the well?  For every bucket, they needed to walk to water from the well over to the jar, over and over again until one jar was full. And there were six jars. 

So when Jesus asked the servants to fill the jars with water, it was no easy task. It took time and hard work to fill all those jars. . 

Miracles flow from what we have, and they take time and hard work. Every time there’s a miracle in scripture, the people involved had to do something that require work and sacrificial effort. Miracles don’t just happen. They happen for the glory of God.  So He wants to be sure all those involved see the glory of God in the miracle. Those servants hauled bucket after bucket of water into those jars. They knew without a doubt that the jars were filled with water. So when the water was changed into wine, they knew it could only be from God. He alone was glorified in those moments. 


Press on ~ you are loved 💗

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