Looking for a Miracle

John 2:1-11
From Water to Wine
1-3 Three days later there was a wedding in the village of Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there. Jesus and his disciples were guests also. When they started running low on wine at the wedding banquet, Jesus' mother told him, "They're just about out of wine." 4 Jesus said, "Is that any of our business, Mother—yours or mine? This isn't my time. Don't push me." 5 She went ahead anyway, telling the servants, "Whatever he tells you, do it." 6-7 Six stoneware water pots were there, used by the Jews for ritual washings. Each held twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus ordered the servants, "Fill the pots with water." And they filled them to the brim. 8 "Now fill your pitchers and take them to the host," Jesus said, and they did. 9-10 When the host tasted the water that had become wine (he didn't know what had just happened but the servants, of course, knew), he called out to the bridegroom, "Everybody I know begins with their finest wines and after the guests have had their fill brings in the cheap stuff. But you've saved the best till now!"
11 This act in Cana of Galilee was the first sign Jesus gave, the first glimpse of his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

Have you ever prayed for a miracle? I'm not talking about a really big miracle – like praying for a loved one near death. I’m talking about little miracles like, "Oh Lord, please let that traffic light stay green "God, please let my team win!"

Very often I hear kids saying “that’s not fair!”. They feel that because they are good and weren’t doing anything wrong – everything should work out well for them.
Bad news is exempt from the laws of the universe. You can follow the rules, eat right, exercise daily, sleep well, love your neighbors, go to church, be honest, give blood, remember your mother’s birthday, tell no ethnic jokes, promptly write thank you notes, recycle, read the Bible, serve dinner at the shelter, wear clean underwear, go for your six-month teeth cleaning – and still have bad news happen.
Isn’t that totally unfair?

That’s the wrong attitude toward miracles. Prayer is a daily offering of our concerns to God, then giving our best to God and trusting that he will handle the rest. That kind of prayer allows us to relax and focus on the things we need to do.
In order to play the game of golf you need to relax. If you were to hit a golf ball with all your might it wouldn’t go where you want. Just relax. Take it easy. Let the club do the work and then your ball would go where you want. Maybe.

If we look at our prayer life and compare it to golf, they are very similar. In both, you can sometimes feel the need to be in control. We pray for results, but we sometimes tell God what those results should be. Likewise, when we pray for action, we sometimes tell God what action to take. We have to learn a valuable lesson that instead of relying on our own abilities, we need to begin trusting God. Many of us fill our lives with unnecessary stress, worry, and aggravation because we will not trust our lives to God. Do the best you can, open your heart to God in prayer, and then let go.

In today’s miracle story, it was not the party trick of turning water into wine, but the willingness of the wine stewards to do what Jesus told them to do that is critically important. The miracle that God works in our lives is the understanding of what he is and what he says deserves my attention. When we discover that what God says is important, then miraculous things happen.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus turned water into the finest wine. The Bible tells us why he performed this miracle. He did not do it to save the bridegroom embarrassment. He did not do it to please his mom. The Bible tells us "This is the first of his signs that Jesus did at Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him."
You see, Jesus wanted to build up the faith of his disciples. He did this so they would know who he was.
By the same power by which Jesus turned water into wine, he can turn our lives – into something beautiful and good. All we have to do is to trust him and do what he says.
The real purpose of miracles is to remind us of God’s care and presence. Our job is to do what he says – then, relax, and let go, and trust him.