And his disciples believed in him. John 2:11b (NLT)
The story in John 2 of when Jesus turned water into wine is one that I ponder. I’ve heard people discuss this and wonder why. Why was this the first miracle? Compared to the times he raised people from the dead, this is really small potatoes. In the big scheme of things it seems so inconsequential.
So why? Maybe we’ll never really know the answer to that but we can look at the things we do know.
We know Jesus came to show us the Father. What can we see in this story?
We can see that Jesus was social. Even though he had a tremendous work to do, he still hung out with people and was part of a community.
We know that he cared about the little things, like this man’s wedding. Maybe in the big scheme of things this miracle was inconsequential but it wasn’t inconsequential to the bridegroom. Jesus showed up where the bridegroom was and helped him with something that was important to him.
We know that God is a very generous God. Jesus could have turned the water into very mediocre wine. Even God’s mediocre would be better than their best. But he didn’t. He produced the very best wine. He gives us his all.
We know that after this first miracle, his disciples believed in him.
To me, this is the best result of this story. Every single day God is working in our lives to reveal his love to us. A lot of the time, we miss it. But when we do see it, we are amazed and we believe. And that is truly why Jesus came. He came so we would see who God really is and turn to him. He came so we would look at the stories in our own lives and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we are loved by a very generous God.