New Wine

I drink. Hard to believe huh? The worst part is I have absolutely no shame about it. And even a step farther off the cliff - I make wine. I don't personally get the whole Christian hang up with alcohol, but I know it is rampant in our slice of religion. Evidently it is easier to believe that people were getting toasted on Welches in Cana than it is to believe Jesus had anything to do with alcohol. After all, when they called him a drunkard and a glutton, it means he wasn't drinking wine, right? Why is it so hard to believe what the Bible says? - Jesus drank.

Enough of my sarcasm. I am not looking to argue alcohol use with any one. What I wanted to write about was a personal journey. Many years ago I used to make wine. It was a recreation for a season of my life. I got a little carried away and had like 750 bottles I had made at one point. I ended up throwing them away during a season where a lot of things were ending. It was symbolic I guess - throwing out the old, admitting the death of many things in my life at the time.

Wine making is really cool. Seeing the carbon dioxide released when the yeast turns the sugar into alcohol (there's that bad word again) brings new meaning to Jesus' story about putting new wine into old wine skins (Welches that is). I used to put a balloon on top of the fermentation container and watch the expansion as the fermentation happened. It was so cool. It would literally blow the balloon up and pop it from all the gases released.

I really enjoyed making the wine. Each batch was a creation, something I uniquely designed. I always did weird wines like raspberry and elderberry and dandelion and spam wine (just kidding on the spam wine). Each bucket of mix was a form of self expression I guess. Something actually felt God honoring in the process of creating, knowing that Papa also enjoyed creating unique things.

But the season of wine making passed, as did a lot of things in my life in that season. I got rid of most of my equipment and walked completely away from it, and in the process lost a creative outlet. It was a rough season of surrender and loss.

Thanks to a little ebaying, I was able to pick up some essentials for making a new batch of wine. So I had the kids slicing peaches (on sale at the market for $1 a pound), while I ran the juicer (garage sale for $3), and Laura (absolutely priceless) added grapes. It was a fun family thing. I purified the fermentation container and we threw everything in and put the yeast and the lid on yesterday. Today at lunch we noticed the bubbles coming through the top of the container, meaning that fermentation had begun. The smell of yeast doing its thing is beginning to fill the kitchen. I was telling the boys about the process the wine would go through and how yeast was an alive organism. It was the thing that brought about change.

I can't tell you how neat it is to be making new wine. It is indicative of a change of seasons in my life - one of moving into grace and freedom again, with a new start. New wine for new life. I like it. It reminds me that God is always working, brewing in us something new, bringing life from the dead things. It reminds me that He is always a God of second and third and 57th chances. It brings me back to the fact that He made wine to, and there is a miracle that happens in the process of wine making that reminds me of the miracle of life. Always something changing. Always something alive in there. Always a measure of His dynamic presence if we will notice it.

So Papa, I invite you to pour yeast again into my heart and create something wonderful and new.