Good Monday morning! A bit sticky as they say this morning. Like most everyone in the northern hemisphere, we are hoping the air will dry out just a bit in August. You might also be wondering where I have been since I have not written since Friday. This weekend was the county fair here in these parts and I entered six photos; my first fair entries in something like 35 years or so. A couple of photos won purple ribbons, which is good for what amounts to my first time out. Of course the real victory is not in what ribbons were awarded, but in the act of putting my first photos out for public viewing and to be judged. When taking up a creative career, we can become paralyzed with fear over what we imagine people might say about our work. The stories you read about the old writer who wrote 26 novels but never sent any of them off to a publisher might seem a bit far fetched until you come up against that first public showing of something you created. Praise the Lord for the courage he gives to us.
We also hosted the Nebraska division of the Christian Motorcyclists Association at our church on Saturday. I was up and taking photos as they rode in for breakfast on Saturday. I didn't count, but there may have been 100 motorcycles or more there along with quite a few cars and trucks.
The CMA event ran through the weekend along with the fair, rodeo, and town sidewalk sale. We had quite a bit going on this weekend.
Today, I have another of those verses cut in the middle of someones words. This time none other than Jesus himself is speaking, but we will have to find out what he has to say over two days. While it is tempting to use Saturday as an excuse for putting verses 7 and 8 together this morning, I'll stay with the one verse each day method I started with.
Jesus told the servants, "Fill the jars with water." When the jars had been filled, (John 2:7)
Yes, today's verse ends with a comma; something that would make your English teacher shriek or at least make big red marks on your paper. However, we are content with what God has given us in this one verse and onward we go! Here we read about a command given by Jesus. You will recall that servants were standing by to do whatever Jesus told them. Jesus gets right to work and has the servants fill up the jars with water, some 120 to 180 gallons all together depending upon the volume of the jars. What we read next is the best part, the servants obeyed, and then we might realize what is missing - there is no scoffing or pert remarks from the servants. If we had been standing there waiting on Jesus to tell us what to do, we might have been a bit surprised by his order. Fill water jars? They need more wine and he is having us fill the water jars? We don't know what the servants thought of that command, but we can come up with a few thoughts that any of us might have entertained at that moment.
It is often said that you face the choice of calling Jesus a liar, a crazy man, or the Son of God. At this moment the servants might have had a perfectly good excuse for choosing "crazy". Jesus has servants standing by to do his bidding, a clear problem to solve, and he seems to be fooling around with something that has nothing to do with the problem at hand. Was he going to have everyone wash up again since they had run out of wine? Just as we have to learn to trust Jesus when he tells us to do something that we think cannot possibly solve the problem we have brought to him, so the servants obeyed without question in this problem. Some instructions we get from the Bible or the Holy Spirit might seem a bit crazy from our limited point of view. Trusting in God does not come naturally to any of us; we must learn and obey.
Have a wonderful week in Christ Jesus!
Bucky
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