A couple of days ago I wrote a post Visions in an Empty Glass following an amazing God moment at church. I continue to savour the images that experience generated for me. God moments like this are not to be taken lightly or dismissed quickly. I am also savouring the new images that post has stirred, finding that I need to pause over each comment, draw breath and allow God to speak to me afresh. Not only are God moments for our edification and learning, the responses that well up from within us and others to these moments are also to be listened to and savoured.
My colleague Andy Wade wrote:
Such powerful images! Change is the state our faith was created for. Not change for change sake, but change that sees us transformed more and more into the likeness of Jesus. I love the imagery of forming/creation – something we all experience by our very existence. Then the filling – we’ve all been filled – it is our breath, our life. The transformation into wine begins as we begin to know Jesus as Saviour (added the “u” for your benefit) Perhaps this is another image of what it means to be “born anew”. Now on the path of “aging”, we are “new wine” in the process of becoming the rich, full-bodied flavour of Christ in the world.
Change is the state our faith was created for. So many of us run from change. We get set in our ways and don’t want to move. I know how easily I get caught up in the familiar routines, once life giving and transformative, now rigid and stagnating.
God makes us all beautiful, handblown goblets, formed from the sand (dust of the earth, but that is not all there is to God’s creativity in our lives. We are made to be transformed.
It occurred to me as I meditated on this that a glass is transparent, the beauty and the glory of God shines through its emptiness. A glass filled with water still allows light to shine through and if you catch it at the right angle, you might see a rainbow. But a glass full of wine is not transparent, it absorbs the light. It glows with the light, and it is only in the drinking of it, really the sharing of it that its full beauty is revealed, not the beauty of the vessel which is our bodies but the beauty, the wonder, the richness of the Spirit that now dwells within.
I shaped you as an empty glass, have filled you with living water and am transforming it into wine.
What imagery do these words I felt God spoke to me (and yes i have changed the original word cup to glass) bring to your mind? Please consider sharing them as I feel there is still more that God wants to speak to all of us about from this vision.