When Friends Fill the Jars: How Everyday Talks Become Life’s Best Wine
When there’s not enough wine at the wedding banquet of your life, you need friends.
As I am working on an article about Fëanor’s plight, this is a repost of an older article on the spiritual wine of friendship — in case you missed it.
I had a lot on my mind, but a friend called, and we chatted for two hours about this and that. Nothing special — he told me about his life, I told him about mine. He told me about a book he’d read. I told him about an article I wrote.
He said he was drinking coffee at the moment, looking out the window. I asked what kind of coffee it was. He asked how my recent trip to Dallas went. I said I enjoyed the bluebonnets along the roads.
We reminisced about the good old days. We laughed. We talked about a lot of trifles — the philosopher we both like, Dante, and my friend’s two cats. When I hung up I couldn’t help smiling. There was a lightness in my soul as if I had just dropped a heavy burden or resolved some agonizing dilemma.
There was sweetness in my soul as if the water of my life was secretly turned into wine. It made me think of a lecture about Cana of Galilee I watched once. When there’s not enough wine at the “wedding banquet of your life,” you need friends — someone who would draw water for you.
It is likely that most of the servants mentioned in the story were the couple’s friends. The bride and bridegroom weren’t rich enough to afford many servants. Each jar held between 18-27 gallons. There were six jars to fill. It adds up to 108-162 gallons of water. Roughly 900 bottles.
It takes friends to do such a feat in such a short time. Time was short — the wine was gone. The guests could notice its absence at any moment. How long did it take them to draw all that water? It didn’t matter. They wanted to help. They didn’t know how water would help. All they knew was that they could bring it.
That’s what friends do. They don’t know how to help us — and they can’t — but they show up anyway. They pick up the first crazy idea that comes to mind. Someone suggests drawing water, and they start drawing water because it’s the only thing they can do. They can’t solve our problems. They can’t produce wine out of thin air. But they can draw as much water as necessary.
We look at them and secretly smile as we see all that sweet fussing, tripping, joking, and spilling water all over the place. Slowly, the “water” of our life starts sweetening. We don’t know the exact moment when it happened. All we saw was water. But now it’s sweet.
The people around us taste the sweetness too and gasp: “You have saved the best wine for last?” “Why?”
I didn’t know I had wine! I thought I had only water. Lots of water.
This wine is from above. It’s supernatural. It’s not of this world. No one knows where it came from. All we saw was water. Lots of water. We talked about trifles. We had coffee. We ate buns. We looked out the window. We discussed Dante. We discussed bluebonnets. We talked philosophy. Nothing special. But now it’s all sweet.
You hang up, lick your lips, and taste the wine. You have friends.
So beautiful; it brought smiles to my face to read :)
My husband and I (who like to live in our comfy little hobbit hole and can have trouble "giving up time" to make plans with friends) always comment after hanging out with people how better we feel. It truly is refreshing and life-giving to live an outward focused life. And as you described, just hanging out and shooting the breeze like we did when we were kids with our friends turns into something magical! Praise the Lord!
Lovely