First Cut

 

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

The next day there was a wedding celebration in the village of Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the celebration.  The wine supply ran out during the festivities, so Jesus’ mother told him, “They have no more wine.”  “Dear woman, that’s not our problem,” Jesus replied. “My time has not yet come.”  But his mother told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”  Standing nearby were six stone water jars, used for Jewish ceremonial washing.  Each could hold twenty to thirty  gallons.   Jesus told the servants, “Fill the jars with water.”  When the jars had been filled, he said, “Now dip some out, and take it to the master of ceremonies.”   So the servants followed his instructions.  When the master of ceremonies tasted the water that was now wine, not knowing where it had come from (though, of course, the servants knew), he called the bridegroom over.  “A host always serves the best wine first,” he said.  “Then, when everyone has had a lot to drink, he brings out the less expensive wine.  But you have kept the best until now!”  This miraculous sign at Cana in Galilee was the first time Jesus revealed his glory. And his disciples believed in him.  John 2:1-11

Jesus clearly told Mary his time hadn’t yet come.  But Mary pushed on with the expedient, asking Jesus to save the wedding party from embarrassment over not having sufficient wine for the festivities.  Imagine balancing the weight of a little glitch in the wine supply for a wedding reception against God’s plans for eternal redemption; there’s hardly a comparison.  But, cutting Mary a little slack, she’d seen her son do some pretty miraculous stuff; it was not odd she’d count on her son to save the day…again.

This was Jesus’ first public miracle, and, like the first cut a stone mason or sculptor makes on his selected rock, it set in motion what would come.  To say that first cuts are important is to understate it by many miles.  A mistake of one degree of lattitude or longitude in a trip across the USA can mean you wind up in Alaska instead of Seattle.  If that one degree is on a trip to the sun, the margin of error increases to light years.  The bigger the undertaking, the more precision in choosing the path is required. 

The timing of Jesus’ public display of his divinity is history for us; it happened at a wedding.  Whose wedding, and why this wedding, is beside the point; Jesus chose to enter the first cut of stone in this building of our redemption at Cana with water turned to wine.  And, in the matter of the water of human souls, Jesus is still doing just that…taking the common, everyday, impure, undrinkable water of our lives and making that first (and every) cut that turns them into a celebration.

We tend to wonder if we’re on the right course – if we’re somehow missing the best navigation of life – if we’re going to wind up in unchartered territory, far from what we…or even God intended.  But the master mason is never uncertain about the first cut. 

For You Today

Have you got any unusual-looking marks in this stone of your life?  Have you wondered what your artist is working on in that job, family crisis, or doctor’s report?  Maybe it’s time to remember Cana.  Be like the servants that day following Mary’s directions…do whatever HE tells you. 

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!   

[1] Title and Other Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©