Untangling Life's Knots:
By Max Lucado
Its your best friends wedding. 'Ill take care of the reception', you'd volunteered. You planned the best party possible. You hired the band, rented the hall, catered the meal, decorated the room, and asked your aunt Bertha to bake the cake.
Now the band is playing and the guests are smiling, but Aunt Bertha is nowhere to be seen. Everything is here but the cake. You sneak over to the pay phone and dial her number. SHe's been taking a nap. She thought the wedding was next week.
Oh boy! Now what do you do? Talk about a problem! Everything is here but the cake...
Sound familiar?
It might. Its exactly the dilemma Jesus' mother, Mary, was facing. Back then, wine was to a wedding what cake is to a wedding today.
What Mary faced was a social problem. No need to call 911, but no way to sweep the embarrassment under the rug either.
When you think about it, most of the problems we face today are of the same caliber. We're late for a meting. We leave something at the office. A coworker forgets a report. Mail gets lost. Traffic gets snarled. The waves rocking our lives are not life threatening yet. But they can be. A poor response to a simple problem can light a fuse.
For that reason you might want to note how Mary reacted. Her solution poses a practical plan for untangling life's knots. 'They have no more wine,' she told Jesus. (John 2:3) Thats it. that's all she said. She didnt go ballistic. She simply assessed the problem and gave it to Christ.
Its so easy to focus on everything but the solution. Mary didnt do that. She simply looked at the knot, assessed it, and took it to the right person. ' I've got one here I cant untie Jesus'.
'When all the wine was gone Jesus' mother said to Him, They have no more wine.' (John 2:3)
Please note, she took the problem to Jesus before she took it to anyone else. A friend told me about a tense deacons meeting he attended. Apparently there was more agitation that agreement, and after a lengthy discussion, someone suggested, 'Why dont we pray about it', to which another questioned, 'Has it come to that?'
What causes us to think of prayer as the last option rather than the first?"
- Max Lucado.
