I have read the book of John many times, but the other day I was rereading John 2 and the story of Jesus's first miracle, and God spoke to me through the passage in a whole new way.
In this story, Jesus gets invited to a wedding where the bride and groom begin to run out of wine. You can probably imagine how embarrassing it is to run out of something at a party your hosting, now imagine its your wedding and your entire reputation and social standing rests on the quality of the food and drink your serving. Jesus is made aware of the situation and then three important things happen: the servants are to to trust Jesus without question, they obediently fill six stone jugs with the water left over from washing the guest's feet, and then Jesus turns the dirty foot water into the best wine that anyone there had ever tasted. Originally, I read this verse as an example of how Jesus cares about even the smallest of troubles in our life and no worry is too trivial for Him; you can't waste His time in prayer.
All this is true, but what I noticed this time is the amount of faith that the servants put in Jesus and also what the water and wine represent. The servants were told by this random guy to serve their master nasty foot water to drink. They could have lost their jobs or even been thrown in prison!
But as ridiculous and scary as it sounded, they did it anyways. Jesus said, "Now draw some out and take it to your master. They did so." (John 2:8) No questions asked, they trusted Him fully. Now, there are a lot of stories of ultimate faith in the Bible, what is so special about this one? Well maybe because it was Jesus' first declaration fo His power, but maybe it's because the nasty water that has been sloshed around and rubbed on everyone's dusty feet is actually us.
Like this water, our lives are polluted by dirt and grime and impossible to clean ourselves, but with faith, Jesus turned water to wine. If we have have faith, what can He turn us into? Simply the sweetest wine that saves a party, or something so immeasurably more than we can only imagine (Ephesians 3:20)! Trust God and follow with faith! If we let Him He will clean us and use us beyond our wildest imaginations!
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