When the Wine Ran Out

There was a wedding once, in a little town called Cana. And oh, a wedding was the gladdest day a town could have. There was music, and dancing, and tables crowded with friends. A wedding could go on for days and days, and everybody came.

A wedding runs on joy, the kind that bubbles up and spills over. And back then, the cup of joy at a wedding was the wine.

But something went wrong.

In the middle of all that gladness, the wine ran out. Nobody announced it. It just happened, jug by jug, until the servants were looking at each other with worried eyes.

Can you imagine? The music still playing, the guests still smiling, and behind it all, a whisper of worry. There isn't enough. The joy is running dry. And the poor bride and groom would be so ashamed.

Now Jesus was there, and his new friends were there too, the ones he had gathered by the river only days before with the words "Come and see." And his mother, Mary, was there. She leaned close to her son and said the smallest, biggest thing: "They have no more wine."

She didn't tell him what to do. She just brought him the empty place. The need. The running-out.

Maybe you know how that feels, when the good thing you were counting on isn't there anymore, and the gladness drains away right when you needed it most.

Jesus looked, and near the door stood six big stone jars, each one tall as a child, and every one of them empty.

"Fill them with water," he said.

So the servants filled them, right up to the brim, with plain water, cold and clear and ordinary.

Then Jesus said, "Now take some out, and bring it to the man in charge of the feast."

The servant dipped his cup and carried it, and his hands must have trembled a little, because he knew it was only water he had poured.

But it wasn't water anymore.

The man in charge took a sip, and his eyes went wide. He called the groom over. "Everyone serves the good wine first," he said, "and the cheap wine after, when no one is looking. But you! You saved the best for last."

The best for last.

The joy hadn't ended. It had only been waiting for Jesus. And what he brought was better than anything that had run out, better than enough, the best wine of the whole feast.

This was the very first wonder Jesus ever did, and he did it at a wedding, of all places, with the music still going, because Jesus had come to bring joy back to a world that kept running dry.

Those tall stone jars held more than wine. They held a promise. One day there will be a wedding bigger than Cana, bigger than the whole world, a feast where Jesus is the groom, and all his children are gathered home, and not one of them is missing. The joy at that table will never run out.

And that joy has already begun. It begins the day you come close, like Mary did, and bring Jesus your empty places.

Most of the guests never learned where the good wine had come from. But the servants knew. And word about this Jesus was beginning to travel, all the way to an important teacher who would come looking for him in the middle of the night.