New wineskins......

Mark 2: 18 - 22

No one puts new wine into old wineskins.......

This year the daily readings I am following starts with the gospel of Mark, after the Christmas season and Epiphany. The passage today seems to be most appropriate as most people are still just getting into the year 2010......

Basically, Jesus invites us not to be resistant to the "always new" work of the Holy Spirit in our lives......easy to say but not so easy to put into practice in the rough and tumble of our daily lives. Yet this is something God always looks for - people whose minds and hearts are like new wineskins - open and ready to receive the new wine of the Holy Spirit. And yet we humans are often resistant to change - the old and familiar feels 'safer' and more secure because we think we know the predicted outcome of things.

But God's ways are ever new and even mysterious. This year so far there have been two people I know (related to my friends) who have passed on....quite suddenly. The second death occurred today.......one moment someone is ok, the next he is gone........

Are such times of lament over 'untimely' deaths not also opportunities to ask for new perspectives so that the ways of God can continue to grow in our lives? Yet it is not merely a matter of 'positive thinking'. What we seek is the 'grace' from God - and only He can work from within to widen and deepen our perspectives. As we get older, I would say it begins to be more difficult to remain open to the ways of God. One of the challenges of midlife is to allow myself enough solitude with the Lord so that my clinging to old ways be gradually transformed. His gift of 'new wine' deserves an ever more spacious heart as receptacle.