Short Stories: The Parables of Jesus
Last Sunday we started a new series called Short Stories - The Parables of Jesus. A parable is a wonderfully simple narrative that uses every day people, events and items to communicate a principle or deeper meaning. Jesus tells parables to help us focus on God, His character and His Kingdom. They also have a way of helping us understand something about ourselves as we look to make sense of life and follow the way of Jesus!
This Sunday Hannah Bain Spoke on The Parable of The New Wine. You can watch again here
New Wine & Old Wineskins
Mark 2:21-22
21 “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. 22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”
‘Sometimes letting go can be painful but if we have eyes to see, we will realise that God loves us too much to leave us where we are! And yet this painful process of renewal must begin - not in a program or ministry or committee room - but inside us. We are the grapes which God lovingly reshapes in order to bring forth new wine for the world. At the same time we are also the new wineskins that God wants to soften, stretch and sew together; wineskins that will be young and flexible enough to contain and ferment and carry the intoxicating new wine of His Spirit for this time, this era of history.
No doubt the Lord honours the heritage of the past - at one point it was the dramatic present and the unknown future. But as this parable conveys, Christ does not enshrine it at the expense of the new wine. And if the Lord doesn't, then neither should we.
All of us probably have ways of being that may have served us well in the past but as this song says so eloquently, today the Lord is calling us 'carry His new fire', which requires us to 'lay down our old ways'; not unlike how we must empty our hands in order to receive each day our daily bread.
Friends, our hands cannot hold both. Let our hearts and memories carry the old ways, but we need both hands to carry God's new fire for today.’
Pat Keady
Reflection Questions
Love is a verb. What can you discover from the life of Jesus about the kind of love that He invites us to give?
Are you allowing God to stretch you - like the new wine skin? What is stopping that? What is supporting that?
If Jesus were you, what would He do? If He was female, if He was a stay at home parent, or an accountant or an artist, or a church leader. How would He live if He were you?
What are you doing in your daily and weekly routine to be active in your spiritual journey so that you may be formed into the likeness of Jesus?
What did Jesus do in his lifestyle, to be in step with the things of God?
Is there a practice from that you want to bring into your life (stillness, solitude, fasting, lament etc)
What would it be and look like, to love this community like Jesus loves?