They Have No Wine

“They have no wine.”

It isn’t a question. It isn’t even really an ask.

Rather it is a simple statement from a mother to her son. At the wedding feast of Cana, Mary makes the needs of the wedding couple known to Jesus. But how could He not have already known? Yet she models so beautifully the role of every Christian: to present our needs and the needs of others to the Lord. She does this with simplicity (she doesn’t muddy it up by telling Jesus how to remedy the problem) and full of trust (since her next words are to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’).

“They have no wine.”

Sometimes I think that I just keep presenting the same thing to the Lord over and over again. While in many ways that is true, there is also a sense in which it isn’t true enough. I am the one who gets tired of asking. I am the one who grows weary with bringing to the Lord that which He already knows better than I do. Unlike Mary, I am less convinced that He will hear my plea and respond generously to me. Instead, I find it necessary to instruct the Lord in how he might fulfill my need. I have the perfect idea for how the Lord might work in my life, if only He would listen.

Jesus, however, is secretive with His plans, hiding from us what the future holds, likely (for nearly all of us) for our own good. He has plans which I cannot fathom, ways to fulfill my longings which I could not guess, even if given thousands of years to do so. And His plans have the benefit of being good and perfect, rather than my own short-sighted idea of what might be good for me.

Take, for instance, the wine. The first sign in John’s Gospel is the changing of water into wine. It is at a wedding, which likely seemed rather ordinary and insignificant overall. Yet near the end of the Gospels, Jesus is present at another meal, not obviously significant initially, and He takes wine this time and changes it into Himself. At a very different sort of wedding, He offers His very self, laying down His life for His Bride.

Here we still find His mother, pointing the way to Jesus and instructing us to listen to Him. His words, however, are harder to follow. Instead of inviting us to drink a cup of wine, He asks if we can drink the cup He drinks. He demonstrates what it looks like to offer a total sacrifice. He gives us to His mother even as He gives His mother to us.

“Do whatever he tells you.”

Lord, grant us the grace to fill jars with water when what we want is wine.
Lord, grant us the grace to trust that You know our needs and desire to fulfill them, even more ardently than we desire them to be fulfilled.
Lord, grant us the grace to see how You keep transforming things in our life into what we could never expect.

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Photo by Sven Wilhelm on Unsplash