Thursday, April 27, 2017

The New and the Old

16“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. 17Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”

Thoughts:  Life is constantly changing.  Who would have thought forty years ago that there would be only a handful of pay phones?  Who would have thought in 1998 when Kodak was running three shifts full speed, that people would stop using film for pictures altogether in seven years.  Change happens like it or not.  It is a part of living.  But we do not worship change, and we need to be careful how we handle it.
    Jesus addresses change in this passage.  His disciples are different from John the Baptist's disciples or the Pharisees.  He is different from them.  He came to make a change- to make a difference.  He is not nearly concerned about the old structures that supported the old theories, as He is of making things new.  Jesus came to bring hope, love, grace infusing these things into an old religion that had become bogged down in rules- losing the heart of what they do.
     The church changes.  New ideas, if they are valid and tested by the Word of God, should be nurtured and given room to grow.  One of the mottos of the Reformation is "Reformed and ever reforming according to the Word of God."  That is, we must make sure it is wine before we put it into the wine skins; and the wine testing is the scripture.  Yet, we are to continually be reforming and changing- adapting to the providence around us- where God is molding and meets us.  Too often the words "we've never done it that way before" get in the way.  The church does not exist to shore up the structure but to shore up the soul.  


Prayer: Lord, help me to go with the flow of change and to guard my heart.  

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