As if that wasn't amazing enough, the man in charge of the feast recognises that it's wine of particularly good quality and asks why the best wine has been saved until last.
I often refer to this passage when I'm talking with people who don't believe in a God who created the whole universe. Such people often refer to things like carbon dating (which claims that our planet is millions or billions of years old) and point out that this would make the universe much older than the Bible says it is.
Irrespective of the fact that carbon dating has been shown to be notoriously inaccurate, this story of the water into wine gives us one possible answer to the dilemma. What makes "good wine"? I'm not a wine drinker, but even I know that good wine is old wine. The older the wine, the better it is considered to be. So, if Jesus could create "old wine" in just a few minutes, I have no problem at all in believing that He could create a seemingly "old" universe in just six days.
When I was leaving South Africa in 2007, I had a number of questions about what my future ministry would look like. I was leaving just at the point where we were beginning to see the fruit of nearly fifteen years of ministry investment in that part of the world, and I wondered what it would be like to "start from scratch" again. Would it take another fifteen years before I could see the same level of fruitfulness back in Europe?
I was encouraged when God spoke to me through verse 10 of this chapter, where the wedding caterer says, "You have kept the best until now." Although I was relocating to a brand new ministry situation, I felt God was reassuring me that, "The best is yet to come." I realised that, although it normally takes years of faithful investment to lay the foundation for a mature and fruitful ministry, God was able to bring maturity and fruitfulness much faster than that - the same as He'd done with the wine at that wedding.
Well, here we are, a dozen years down the road, and this week I was asking myself, has this past decade in Spain turned out to be "the best" so far?
I'm not sure there's a simple yes or no answer to that, but I was amazed to look back at these eleven years in Europe/Spain and see very many encouraging instances of great fruitfulness - from the Planting Together outreaches to the leadership development courses and also my more recent involvement in coaching missionary leaders. God has been faithful to what He promised at that time. I don't know if it's "the best" yet, but it's certainly been a decade of opportunities and fruitfulness.
I wonder where you're at in your life and your walk with God. Are you in an encouraging season of investment and fruitfulness or are you at a place where you feel that the best years of your life are probably behind you now? It's good to remember that, no matter where we're at in our journey, God is able to bring good things out of it if we simply trust and obey Him.
