Awaiting New Wine

Awaiting New Wine

It’s time for a new Bible, but I don’t want a new one. The one I’ve most often used for years now is comfortably familiar. But its cover has detached from the spine, and pages are coming unhinged, sections at a time. The concordance has several folded pages stashed in the back, the way my grandmother used to keep folded tissues in her purse. If I don’t turn the pages gently and coddle it carefully in my lap, it might not last another week.

But I don’t want to let it go.

A new Bible always feels like starting over, and one glance at this one reminds me I’ve come a very long way. I know its tearstained pages, and those that have been like sweet balm to wounds the world made. I know where to turn to verses that have shaped my life. I know where the promises are that feed my soul, and I need them no less now than I did when this Bible was new.

This is not just any book, or even any Bible. It’s a record of my most recent history with Jesus, and it’s unspeakably sweet to me. It occurs to me that my reluctance to replace my old Bible is in some ways like my reluctance to leave whatever comfort God has given me and venture into the newness of the unknown. But he didn’t call me to a faith that stalls out in the first place it finds that feels like home.

There is infinitely more ahead with him than there ever was behind. The past, as hard fought and precious as it was, is not where I’m meant to live. Every day with him is a clean white page waiting for old words to be applied in a new way. He will bring new wine, teach new lessons—if I will let go of the old.

So when no one’s looking, one day soon, I’ll kiss the cover of this dear old friend and put it away. I’ll crack a new spine and breathe in the smell of new pages and wait again for brand-new wine.

No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins as well; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.

Mark 2:22, NASB