Over the years I have had the chance to share many bottles of wine with friends and loved ones. Many have been the moments that have been used as an excuse to enjoy some of the finest offerings from the world’s vineyards.
Yet out of all of these occasions, there is one bottle of wine in particular that I will never forget. It wasn’t so much the events that prevent me from forgetting it as those times have their own reasons why I remember them in spite of the wine. The unshakable memory of why this wine sticks out is because its taste impacted me in such a way that it quite literally changed the way I see and understand wine today.
“Come through here,” my Swiss friend said as he ushered me into a cold and darkroom in the far end of his country home. No windows were present in the walls and the darkness was intense to the point that when the door was close you could not even see the palm of your hand. As a faint light came on an array of bottles revealed themselves.
All of them separated by the years they were made. “Pick one” I heard him say while I walked and picked one up by the stack that had 1956 on it. What followed was a delightful ceremony in his kitchen where we began to enjoy a bottle of wine that was older than each one of us. Certainly, a moment I will never forget for the remainder of my days.
The reality is that it is very easy to get lost in wonder while enjoying something like this. So much that the simplicity of the occasion often causes us to miss the process this bottle of wine had to go through so that when it was opened it could make the lasting impression it did. Consider with me how this wine spent the majority of its life in a dark and cold dungeon removed from the rest of the world. It sat year after year being still and unnoticed by others. The only one that knew about it and remained involved with it was its maker. The rest didn’t even know that it existed.
I wonder if this is how you have felt about your life in the last decade or two? If it has then please read on.
I strongly believe that like this wine God has had many of us in a long season that has felt obscure, unimportant, and by all means inconsequential to the rest of the world. Day after day. Month after month and year after year has gone by with nothing happening but the same old daily routine. Yet what seemed like a lifeless waste of time was actually a time to die and discover the truth within our hearts so we could live and shine at a time such as this. When shared with the world around us we would have a lasting impact that would go on to affect many others for years to come.
Just like that bottle of wine.
We are living today in a time of uncertainty and instability. Everything that seemed solid is crumbling all around us as we desperately look for an answer that will give us hope. Yet not much seems to be doing that as what normally did now seems tasteless and like it has gone past its sell-by date.
For this reason and others, I am therefore convinced that God is beginning to bring bottles out from the cellars of his Kingdom that have been sitting in obscurity wondering if they had been passed by and that was it. One by one he is dusting them off and is starting to pour them out as it is time for a deep and authentic drink to be revealed.
Please understand that I am not talking about a new congregation, movement, or a clever spiritual cliche. No, what I am referring to here is something that will impact people personally and in real-time around the world like never before, because it will taste like nothing that has ever been tried before. Just like that bottle of wine did with me, it will quite literally change the way that many see, understand, and experience the Kingdom.
Why now?
Because like with the wedding in Cana the wine of the Kingdom is always served after the empire’s cheap imitation has run out.
