Daily Devotionals

They put new wine into new wineskins and both are preserved (Matthew 9:17).

Having gathered as many apples as we could from the orchard, we were on our way to the local cider mill. The old Volkswagen van was so weighed down with sacks of apples that the tires looked like pears. When the trip was done, we had over ninety gallons of apple cider. That year we gave away a lot of cider.

I gave one gallon (in a glass jug with a screw-on top) to a friend who worked in a florist shop. He set it under the counter, planning to take it home at the end of the day, but he forgot. He continued to forget about the jar of cider, until one morning when he entered his shop and found it splattered with fermented cider and broken glass, smelling like a distillery.

This is precisely what Yeshua was speaking about in Matthew 9. The process of change that was taking place in the cider required a flexible container that could expand. Because glass does not have those properties, the result was an explosion!

In today's Scripture reference, Yeshua does not tell us to exchange one set of religious forms for another. He encourages us to embrace his unfolding plan for our lives. We have been filled with the new wine of the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit). In order for us to handle the changes that will inevitably result, we must be flexible in his hands.

...joyfully accept all that the Lord wants to do in my life. I will reject rigidity and brittleness, and embrace flexibility and growth.

MM