New Wineskins

“No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak. If he does, its fullness pulls away, the new from the old, and the tear gets worse. Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins are ruined. Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins.” Mark 2:21-22

I believe God's Word is always new, ever fresh, eternally alive and exciting. However it does not always appear that way, does it? That is because it is put into OLD WINESKINS! I believe that we all need to find fresh new ways of understanding, listening, obeying, teaching, loving. We can't do the same old, same old. When I went to Europe in 2009, I noticed the magnificent churches and cathedrals were filled with old people. How do we reach the younger generation?

How do we, as Jesus asked us to do, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch?" (Luke 5:4) Yesterday, our community celebrated our annual Day of Dedication, where like in Jesus’ time, new babies are presented to the community. We have done this every year since 1984, for 37 years now! What a milestone! My niece’s baby was presented, and he is a fourth generation child born into our community, Ligaya ng Panginoon (Joy of the Lord). His grandparents on both sides were part of our community. We have to share our wine for our children and our children’s children and have to make sure we have fresh wineskins. 

Yesterday, our family watched Jeff Cavins’s Great Bible Adventure, and my son immediately asked, “When was this made?” because the video looked old, and the graphics left much to be desired. He also asked me if we could make the video run twice faster which is how he usually watches! This showed me what a different world we live in. 

These days, what are our children into? I use Viber, but our children have abandoned that in favor of Telegram. They don’t like Facebook, and prefer Instagram. Lots of kids use Tiktok and I have yet to open that. In 2020, there were over 3.6 billion people using different social media apps worldwide. This is projected to increase  to almost 4.41 billion in 2025. Yes, people of today have a new way of interacting. We don’t need the handshake anymore or face to face meetings, especially with the worldwide pandemic! But that means, there are no borders anymore, and there are myriads of ways to reach out! It is exciting to see, experience and use these new frontiers! We all should be winemakers, filled with the Spirit of God, excited about what God wants us to do and HOW He wants us do it!