Party Saver

I was replaying the events of my day in my head when I was reminded of something I had heard years earlier. You may of heard this popular Bible story from John 2: 1-11. It’s the one where Jesus performs his first miracle. Jesus goes to a wedding feast with his disciples and during the celebration the host runs out of wine. Jesus’ mother approaches him and tells him about what happened. See in that time weddings feasts were these week long affairs with huge banquets where the whole town was invited. Much planning went into these events. To run out of wine during one of these feast was more than just embarrassing; it broke the unwritten rules of the day concerning hospitality. Anyhow, Jesus’ mother told him about the problem and after some interesting comments to his mother, Jesus turned the water into wine. We’re not talking about cheap ripple either; we’re talking about some fine vintage stuff. By turning the water into wine Jesus saved the host of the party a tremendous amount of embarrassment by not running out of wine. And by not running out of wine the guest did not leave and the party continued.

Basically…Jesus saved the party.

When thinking about the events of my day, that's what I realized had happened to me. Jesus had saved my party. He didn't turn my water into wine or perform what most would consider a miracle. But he did save me from what could have been a potentially embarrassing situation. I’ll spare you the boring, technical details but He saved my “professional” party. I’m working on a huge software upgrade at work that is very demanding. Anyhow, through a series of events and discoveries that I take no credit for, I was shown where we were not fully prepared for our next upgrade. I was operating under the impression we were – but I found out we weren’t. Being responsible for this upgrade, I’m glad I found out now instead of later. It would have been very embarrassing and very costly ($) to the company. Jesus saved my party only the way he can.

Perhaps you’ve had Jesus save your party. You’re at a stop sign, you’ve looked both ways and you start to pull out. Suddenly out of now where is another car or a kid on a bicycle – for the life of you, you can’t figure out how you missed them. Or maybe it’s the end of the month and the check book is bottomed out. Your output is greater than your intake – you don’t know how you’re going to make ends meet. Then from out of the blue you get an expected check or receive a timely gift. Whatever it is you’ll take it and the bills get paid. Jesus saved your party. By now you get the point and you can probably think of times in your life where you were in a bind. You and only you know the depth of the pile dodo you stepped into. You can’t see a remedy and no solution is in sight. You close your eyes, grit your teeth and brace yourself for impact. But then….nothing. Slowly you open one eye and think “What happened? Why didn’t I ….”. It’s at that moment you realize you’ve been rescued; you’ve been saved from yourself. You’re the only one on this earth who knows all the details of your situation and you know there is no way this should have happened. The outcome should be different. There’s only explanation: Jesus saved your party. If you've every had your party saved you won't forget it.

Often times our first and natural reaction is to say “Wow, I sure was lucky!” Frankly speaking - luck had nothing to do with it. Personally, I think luck gets far more credit than it deserves in situations like these. Luck runs out – Jesus doesn’t. Anyhow, today I realized that my party was saved. One final thought concerning this and I’ll shut up. In the last verse (John 2:11) regarding this story it says “…. He thus revealed his glory and his disciples put their faith in him.” Two really interesting things happened when Jesus turned the water into wine and saved this party. First, it “revealed his glory” – it showed who he was. And second, by revealing his glory it caused his disciples to “put their faith in him”. When Jesus saves my party the same thing happens to me. His shows me who he is (his glory) and I’m reminded to put my faith in him. All I know is that I’m grateful that he thinks enough of me to intervene in my life – he’s invited to do so at anytime.

Enough about that – we’re out of town for the long weekend (MLK). We’re going to go see Kiel in Orlando - should be fun. I think Kathy’s dad Warren is going to come up to Orlando on Sunday and hangout with us. Hope everyone has a great weekend. We’ll try to take lots of pictures. Take care!