When we are right in the middle of a dark abyss, with no "sign of light at the end of the tunnel" what does one do? You know I have had to really put aside my feelings when good people with good intentions give you the old cliche's. I have learned through that, that I really have put my trust in people instead of God. Bottom line is, when someone is going through a tough time, I mean a really tough time, God has given us compassion for a reason. I think a big part of compassion is closing the mouth and opening the ears. I tend to be a "fixer". I just want to fix it for them. In reality that is not my job, that's God's job. What I can do is listen, hug,perhaps bring them a starbucks, clean their house,babysit, and only speak if they want me to.
Back in the Bible days, they used what's called wine skins to hold wine. Yes people wine, not grape juice, but wine. Anyways Jesus would always teach people in parables. I'm thankful for that as He always used metaphors,allegories to illustrate tools that we can use to "get through" life. So back to the wine skins. If you poured fresh wine in an old wine skin it would burst, destroying both the fresh wine, and the wine skin.
I borrowed this illustration and explanation of the process of wine making:
The image of wineskins that Jesus uses in his parable is foreign to our culture. The only leather wine container we can imagine is the tear-shaped leather bota that Spaniards use to carry wine and squirt it into their mouth. But that is very unlike the wineskin Jesus refers to.
Wine was made by treading barefoot on the grapes in a wine press, a square or circular pit hewn out of the rock, or dug out and lined with rocks and sealed with plaster. (See Isaiah 63:2-3; Job 24:11b; Lamentations 1:15; Joel 3:13; Matthew 21:33; Revelation 14:19-20; 19:15, where treading the winepress was a symbol of judgment.) The juice then flowed through a channel into a lower vessel, a winevat which functioned as a collecting and fermenting container for the grape juice or must.
In the warm climate of Palestine, grape juice began to ferment very quickly and there was no easy way to prevent fermentation. After the first state of fermentation had taken place in the winevat, the wine was separated from the lees (that is, sediment of dead yeast, tartar crystals, small fragments of grape skins, etc.) and strained through a sieve or piece of cloth (cf. Matthew 23:24). After four to six days it was poured into clay jars lined with pitch (called amphorae in Greece, e.g. Jeremiah 48:11) or animal skins for storage and further fermentation.[3]
Wineskins were made of whole tanned goatskins where the legs and tail were cut off and had been sealed (1 Samuel 1:24; 10:3; 16:20; 25:18; 2 Samuel 16:1). In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word nebel, "skin-bottle, skin," is translated by the KJV as "bottle" which gives us images of glass wine bottles. But these were rather whole goatskins, with nubbins bulging out where the legs once were, the neck tied off where the wine has been poured in, the whole large skin bulging almost to bursting as the carbon dioxide gas generated by the fermentation process stretches it to its limit. This image is well described by Job:
"For I am full of words,
and the spirit within me compels me;
inside I am like bottled-up wine,
like new wineskins ready to burst." (Job 32:18-19)
Fermentation in the wineskin might continue for another two to four months until the process slows down and stops.[4] By that time the skin has been stretched to its limit. The alcohol is probably about 12%, and the collagen protein that gives the leather its stretching ability has been stretched out, and probably denatured by the alcohol, destroying its natural resiliency. The skin's ability to contract and stretch again has been lost. - by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
Every woman who has had a baby or a couple of them know that their belly just doesn't quite go down like it was before it was stretched to an unimaginable size.
This is what I'm saying: Once you have been stretched, you are never the same. The stretching process is defintely not fun, as it can be quite painful. But stretching changes your shape, and size. Once your mind has been stretched you can never go back to the old way of thinking. This is good. Change is good. Honestly the good old days are over, and better days are ahead.
I feel like a new wineskin ready to burst,but if the wineskin is opened before it's ready, the fermenting process will be incomplete. Perhaps you feel like me, and that you have something wonderful and "intoxicating" to share with the world. But if the process of aging wine is interupted too soon, the taste will be bitter, and sour.
When I'm around people I don't want a bitter taste to be left in their mouth. But I'd rather leave the sweet aroma of Jesus. So through this season of stretching, I'm using it as a time of learning,waiting, and refining. My prayer and hope is that when it comes time to pour out this new wine, it will have the full-bodied characteristics of that of a perfectly aged wine that leaves a sweet aroma.
