New wineskins...

"Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins."
Luke 5:38

I'm sure I've confessed my bewilderment at this reading before. I never felt I had a grip on it until I attended a closing mass for a men's Cursillo a million years ago. I watched the men come in, disheveled and tired, looking rather like the "undesirable" prize in a Mystery Date game. But there was something unmistakably wonderful about them, too. They were in new wineskins! They sure didn't look new but what had occurred over the weekend for them made them new creations, beautiful to behold even in their exhausted state. So, I got the new wineskins thing a bit better after that. Today, when I heard the reading, this sentence caught my eye, "Rather, new wine must be poured into new wineskins." I likened my move to Boise and complete new way of life to a new wineskin...it is so different than what I was doing and where I was living. My life has completely changed. I'm in a different stretch of water and a brand new wineskin, both metaphors for the new life God has been preparing me for and preparing for me for the last several years. The new wine God is making in my life had to have a new wineskin, a new container, if you will. My life had to be pared down to be much simpler, with much less stuff and much more time for God. I must say this new wine is delicious, too! What about you? Has God been fermenting a new batch of wine for your life? Do you need a new wineskin to put it in? Good food for thought to ponder and pray with this September weekend! Blessings and love from the treehouse, heidi