Today's Daily Lesson is from Matthew 9 verse 17:
" 17 Neither is new wine put into old swineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”
You gotta love a savior who knows something about wine and how to preserve it.
Some Pharisees asked Jesus why he and his disciples did not fast while they and the disciples of John the Baptist were required to fast. Jesus answered with a parable about new wine and old wineskins, to make the point that he was doing something new - something which wasn't going to easily conform to old patterns. In fact, what Jesus was doing was going to be disruptive to old religious ways. Jesus' point was clear -the joyous wine the old religious ways were meant to carry had run dry; a new religious way of living was needed.
Throughout the centuries too many religious leaders (including John the Baptist) have viewed a Godly life to be one of profound seriousness, sober-mindedness and ascetic discipline. But the life Jesus so often lived with his disciples could be likened unto what a couple of glasses of wine with friends might bring us - joy, laughter, ebullience, and celebration. If your religion has all of the former of these with none of the latter, then it may be time to take a sip or two from a new wineskin.
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