Get ready to uncork your understanding! This week on Cabernet and Pray, we're swirling together two unlikely passions - Christianity and wine. We'll be sipping on a 2017 Sokol Blosser Big Tree Block Pinot Noir and unraveling the wisdom of Richard Bohr as we savor the intricate connection between God, wine, and life.
Life, much like winemaking, is full of unpredictable and challenging vintages. Sometimes, we try to make the best of a less-than-ideal harvest. But, what if we could become masters at turning those tart grapes into a complex and delightful wine? Just as a winemaker works with the given conditions to create something extraordinary, we too can harness our faith and resilience to thrive amid adversity. As we navigate through uncertain seasons, let's turn to Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 4 and experience anew the transformative power hidden in our fragility.
Finally, let's raise a toast to an anti-fragile faith. It's not about maintaining a perfect, unbroken exterior but about growing stronger from the breaks and cracks. With their raw and unorthodox faith, the early Christians knew this all too well. They faced trials and challenges head-on, growing stronger from each experience. As we venture deeper into the world of wine and Christianity, let's learn to celebrate life's joys and struggles, knowing that God's love is steadfast in every season. Cheers to you, and let's savor this fascinating journey together!
See audio and video episodes at: https://communionwineco.com/podcast/
Find out more at: https://linktr.ee/communionwineco
Get ready to uncork your understanding! This week on Cabernet and Pray, we're swirling together two unlikely passions - Christianity and wine. We'll be sipping on a 2017 Sokol Blosser Big Tree Block Pinot Noir and unraveling the wisdom of Richard Bohr as we savor the intricate connection between God, wine, and life.
Life, much like winemaking, is full of unpredictable and challenging vintages. Sometimes, we try to make the best of a less-than-ideal harvest. But, what if we could become masters at turning those tart grapes into a complex and delightful wine? Just as a winemaker works with the given conditions to create something extraordinary, we too can harness our faith and resilience to thrive amid adversity. As we navigate through uncertain seasons, let's turn to Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 4 and experience anew the transformative power hidden in our fragility.
Finally, let's raise a toast to an anti-fragile faith. It's not about maintaining a perfect, unbroken exterior but about growing stronger from the breaks and cracks. With their raw and unorthodox faith, the early Christians knew this all too well. They faced trials and challenges head-on, growing stronger from each experience. As we venture deeper into the world of wine and Christianity, let's learn to celebrate life's joys and struggles, knowing that God's love is steadfast in every season. Cheers to you, and let's savor this fascinating journey together!
See audio and video episodes at: https://communionwineco.com/podcast/
Find out more at: https://linktr.ee/communionwineco
Well, welcome my friends to episode one of Cabernet and Pray. This is something I have been dreaming about for a long time and I'm so excited to be able to share this with you. Now, what we're going to do in most of these episodes is I'm going to invite friends along with me, I'm going to interview all sorts of people, and I've got a list of them already beginning, but I thought for episode one, I'll just start with me, just me, and you guys set the tone a little bit of what is this going to be, and there will be episodes where it'll be just me, but this is going to be a journey of mine that I would love to bring you in on and find compelling ways to explore Christianity through the world of wine. Now, thinking about what will be fun with these guests, is that a lot of them will be ministry people, right, these are people who are into theology, into the church world, pursuing Jesus in an interesting way, and what's going to be unique for them is that they're not probably familiar with drinking while they do that, or maybe at least not on camera, right? So we're going to get them to drink with us on the podcast and we'll get to explore that with them. That'll bring out a little humorous aspect of that. Maybe, and for the people in the wine industry that we're going to bring on, they may not be used to talking about Jesus, talking about their faith, and so, for all different reasons, this is going to be a fun exploration of both wine and Christianity, and hopefully, all of our guests are going to explore that in unique ways and you get to be a part of it with us.
Speaker 1:Now, today, I want to set the tone for where we're going, and so I'm going to establish a few things that we're going to do right out of the gate. Now I've got a brand new setup here, so I've got sound effects, and I'm super excited to use sound effects, because why not? So I'm going to teach you some of the sound effects that we're going to hear throughout the show, and you'll know, when you hear these sounds, what's coming next, for example, my first sound effect. That means it's time to introduce to you what we're drinking today. Now I have got a bottle of Soco Blosser. This is 2017.
Speaker 1:Big Tree Block Pinot Noir this is one of the oldest wineries in Oregon Actually goes back to 1971. I actually got to explore these guys this summer when we were there and fell in love with what they're doing. They have library wines. I ended up picking up a bottle from like 1999. So they have wines that go way back and you can experience all of this, but these are some of the OGs of Oregon and yet not crazy expensive. You can find them throughout all different places, so you can actually find these in certain stores or wine bars, but really incredible wine, and so today I've poured myself a glass of that, and so I want to explain what it is that I'm drinking the 2017 Soco Blosser.
Speaker 1:Now, just a few things that are fun. Number one I've never, to my knowledge, had wine on a podcast before. I've thought about it numerous times, but now we're doing it. So first thing I noticed about this one is 2017, for a Pino is a little bit on the older side, especially from like Oregon. Obviously get way older, but this is already a little bit age and color wise. I don't know if you can see, but it's already got a little bit of garnet color to it, a little bit of that brown color which usually is what you see with wines that's been aged a little bit and so it starts to get a little bit of life there in the color itself Primary notes as I was tasting this, it's got cranberry, red cherry, black cherry, some great kind of traditional Pino Noir flavors. A little bit of secondary notes and again, just because of the age, I got a little bit of vanilla there. Not a ton of tertiary flavors. That's what you get more from longer aged wines. I'm not currently getting it on this, but this is a very balanced wine. It would be really fun to age this wine or to drink this years from now. But one of the things you're going to have to get used to is when you drink wine, you got to slurp it and if you've ever been to one of our community events not something that we do regularly we encourage people to slurp. If you've never done it before, perhaps a little bit weird, but here you go, here's how you properly slurp and that allows you to aerate it in your mouth and it's just super, super fun. So cheers to you and hopefully, if you're not driving while you listen to this or watch this, hopefully you've got your own glass of wine. So that's just an encouragement to drink along with us.
Speaker 1:I do want to share a quote to kind of set the tone for today, and this is also where I got the title of today's episode. This comes from a guy named Richard Bore. He said great winemakers make great wine. Period. Great vintages don't make bad winemakers great. Now I want to pack this because I really like this idea that if you are a great wine maker, whatever you're given, you're going to make great wine out of it. If you're not a great wine maker, you could be handed grapes from the best vintage in the world and it's still not going to be a great wine because you don't know what to do with it. Now, for most of us who are watching or listening to this, you're probably not making your own wine. If you are so glad that you're a part of this, let's be friends, let's talk more. I'd love to have you on the show, but a lot of us we're not actually doing this. We're enjoying the people who have done this. So I want to set this more up for a life metaphor what are you making out of the vintages of your life? So each of us go through seasons Some seasons are great seasons, some seasons are not and we get to decide what do we make out of that?
Speaker 1:And when you're in the wine industry, you hear a lot of talk about this, and maybe you thought this is fluff, but a lot of times, when they're talking about a certain year in a region, they're going to tell you the weather. They're going to tell you stories of oh, let me tell you about the rain we had that year, or the sunshine we had that year, or the frost we had that year. And there's a reason why they're telling you. It's not just like trying to hype up wine or trying to sell you more. They're trying to tell you why that vintage is shaped the way it is, what went into that. And some years are ideal conditions and some years are not. And the years that are not, I think recently in 2020, in Oregon, tons of fires and smoke, and California's had to deal with this recently as well. That makes it really hard, especially on Pinot Noir, which are thin-skinned grapes, and so that year is a really interesting year to drink Pinot Noir from Oregon, and so all he's going to do what is going on that year and then what the winemakers are doing with it.
Speaker 1:But the question I want to ask you is is what are you making out of your life? What is your life turning into? And we might want to answer by explaining the actual vintage, right? Well, let me tell you what's going on. Let me tell you the conditions, whether they're good or whether they're not good, and really that's kind of one part of it. But just like Robert Poros says, great vintages don't make bad winemakers great Like a good winemaker is going to figure that out and a bad winemaker is not going to make anything good out of it anyways.
Speaker 1:Now I think that you and I were quick to focus just on the vintage and overplay that and downplay our own abilities, our winemaking skills, if you will. We think this has been a really good year and so good things are going to happen automatically. Or, conversely, this has been a really bad year and so I'm not expecting anything good to come in. And if you find yourself thinking that way, what you're really doing is alleviating the role that you can play, the reaction that you have to that, and it's kind of waving the towel, saying hey, there's nothing I could do about it. This is just the year, this is what I was given, and I just want to encourage you that that's only one way to look at it, that we can look at it like a winemaker wouldn't go. Ok, this is what I was given. How am I going to respond? How am I going to figure out what to make of that? And again, I love the way that Robert Poros says this.
Speaker 1:Now, my own journey, I would say the last few years, have been totally, totally, completely different than anything I would have expected. If you would have told me I don't know three, four years ago I would be starting a community wine co-podcast called Cabernet and Prey. I would not have believed you because I was using my gifts in a very different setting at that point. Now, a few years into this, I've realized it's time to pivot. It's time to figure out what do I like doing? What do I feel like I have a skill at? What am I passionate about? And then, how do I find new ways to do that? And I've learned I really enjoy podcasting. I've really enjoyed the bits of it that I've done so far and I want to go deeper into that and I will learn more. And I want to figure this out even better and I enjoy this as a medium. And so I'm pivoting, and this is something that's come out of this.
Speaker 1:What I've realized in my own journey is that when you get a rough vintage, if you will, when life is difficult, there's so much pain that goes in it and perhaps you can relate that when you're in the middle of that season, there's just so much emotion that comes with it, so much frustration that comes with it, so much heartache. And yet what I've also realized is that so much life can come out of that as well, and that's one of the beautiful ironies of wine Is wine often grows in less than ideal environments. Wine thrives. These vines thrive in places where other plants would not. In fact, when there's not great soil, when there's not great amounts of water, when they're on a hill and they have to dig deep for it and you're going, how does it do? Well, that's actually some of the best wine in the world. Those are the conditions, and I really think this is a great metaphor, as we get into this podcast, of how do we live differently, how do we live more strategically, how do we pursue truth and pursue Jesus and pursue whatever it is that ultimately is going to allow you to thrive, how do we do that better? And I think all of this is wrapped up in this same idea.
Speaker 1:Now there's a concept that I've been thinking about for the last few years, actually, and in this few years of mine, where I've had a lot of pivots, a lot of head scratching, a lot of what the heck am I doing there's this image that I've returned back to numerous times and I want to share it with you today. I think it's so helpful. It doesn't get talked about enough, and I think there's something really powerful there, and I'm going to use a few verses to explain it. Now, this is from the apostle Paul. I'm going to have a sip of wine before I read this. This is from 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, beginning in verse 6 through verse 9. Paul writes this for God, who said let light shine out of darkness. Made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. So Paul is setting this image up and I want you to notice the phrase that he's using that we have this image in jars of clay. Now I don't know the audience we've got yet right.
Speaker 1:If you are like me and you grew up in church, you're likely thinking of an amazing band back in the day jars of clay. I went to these guys' concerts. Fun fact, I was like a pen pal. That's literally what I would call it because it was back in the day I was a kid. The bass player somehow I had an in with and I used to like write messages to the bass player when I was a kid and I literally I was so young I was using my mom's email account I think it was like a Juno account back then and I ended up creating my own account just to email the bass player. I was like huge into these guys, so that's just not really the point.
Speaker 1:But I can't think about this passage without thinking about jars of clay, the band, but Paul's using this image here that we hold this treasure in jars of clay. Now, if you're thinking about the image you're going. Okay, let's just logically break this down. This is a little bit of a confusing image, paul. Why that? Why are we using clay jars here? Is that all that's available, like there's nothing else we couldn't use anything better and back in the time there were other options. Like you had metal jars and if a metal jar was broken you could repair it.
Speaker 1:Paul doesn't say that we hold this treasure in metal jars. There were glass jars and if a glass jar was broken you could melt that down and the material could be reused. But Paul doesn't say we hold these in glass jars. Paul says we hold this treasure in jars of clay. Well, clay was commonplace. They're inexpensive, easily broken and once you break these, you discard them. You don't reuse them, you don't repurpose them. They were cheap and they were of little value. So the question is why would you ever put a treasure in a jar like that? Like what does Paul say? Is Paul not understanding logic? Does Paul not understand the way the world works? Why is Paul talking about putting a treasure we have from God in a clay jar?
Speaker 1:If we're honest, this sounds incredibly fragile and it also sounds like so much of Christianity today. I don't know about you, but I watch so much of the news and so much of what I see in the church and people you know, just public Christians on social media and it looks fragile to me. It looks like this religion that oftentimes is afraid before anything else. Don't challenge us, don't make us think, don't invite us outside of this box that we've created, and maybe that's your view of Christianity today. Yeah, it's a fragile religion for fragile people, and I certainly understand why you could come to that conclusion. I think a lot of people would say, yeah, this is really, this is how it's designed.
Speaker 1:But in order to understand really what, where Paul's going with this, we have to keep going with his logic. Here I'm going to show you what he says sacred things, for verse 10 says we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body, for we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus's sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. Okay, so now Paul's getting even weirder with this argument. He's saying we carry around the death of Jesus in our body so that the life of Jesus is able to be revealed. Okay, so how do we do this? So our fragility isn't the end of the story. In fact, what Paul is saying is, as we break, this treasure inside actually gets revealed more and more. Now let me just take a little logical break here for a second. Let's figure out how we can think about this, how we can understand Paul's argument.
Speaker 1:What is the opposite of fragility? If you had to pick a word and I said, okay, you have fragile on one end, what's its opposite? You might come up with a word like robust. You might say, yeah, the opposite of fragile is robust. But that's not the opposite. Robust just means it will take longer to break it. It doesn't mean it won't break. It doesn't mean it's truly the opposite of something fragile. It just means it's more durable than something that was fragile. So what's the opposite of fragile? Now, there is actually a word for this. I didn't make this word up, but there's a legitimate word, and the word is anti-fragile. So you have fragile on one end, robust maybe we could put in the middle. On the other side we would say anti-fragile. Now something that is anti-fragile actually gets stronger with opposition. So it truly is the counterpoint to the concept of fragile.
Speaker 1:Now I want you to think about if you're mailing a box. We've all seen when you're mailing a box and you've got glass in it and you put that giant sticker on that says fragile. What are you communicating when you put that sticker on? It is a plea to anybody who touches the box, moves the box, transfers the box. Please be gentle. Please do not manhandle this box, because what is inside will not make it as intended. If you do, it's just kind of acknowledgement of it. It's very delicate, please go easy on it. Now. You've never seen a box with a robust label on it, because that would be a normal box.
Speaker 1:Any box that you mail that you don't put the word fragile on, you could consider that's a robust box. Hey, you're not saying, hey, go beat the box up, I don't care. You're just saying it's probably going to make it there. Okay, I don't need to put a sticker on. I don't need to ask for any special requests here. This is probably going to make it to its destination on time, maybe not on time, but at least in one piece, even if the box gets a little roughed up. But if you are mailing something that was anti-fragile, you might put a sticker on there that says please mishandle, please do something to this like drop it, kick it, run over it with your UPS truck, do whatever you got to do. You would actually be saying to them. This will get better as this experiences damage.
Speaker 1:You may be thinking that doesn't make any sense at all. What on earth would be like that? There's actually a great image of this If you've ever seen the movie Black Panther. There's in the movie Black Panther the first one he gets this suit and his sister makes him this suit. This suit basically absorbs all of the damage that he receives and then channels it back If he gets kicked. It absorbs all the energy behind that kick, stores it when he punches or when he kicks. It releases all of that in addition. Literally, the more you get beat up in that suit, the stronger you are. They figure that out when they start fighting him. Like, how do you fight a guy with an antifragile suit? That's pretty difficult, but that's a great picture of what it means for something to be antifragile.
Speaker 1:Now, at this point, I want to stop. I want to take a break. I'm going to give you another music cue, this music cue we're going to see each and every week. This is going to be an important one, because this one, this one, tells us that it's time for a drink, break Time just to slow down. Take a break from what we're talking about. Have a bit of a drink. Now, often at this point in the show, I'm going to ask whoever we're talking to say all right, I want you to tell me about one of the best glasses of wine you've ever had in your life. I just want to hear people talk about great, amazing wine stories. I've got a number of them, one of them that I was thinking about as I was preparing for this episode the last one that I had that really just blew me away.
Speaker 1:We were in France on a wine cruise last summer, this unbelievable trip. We went to this chateau for dinner one night and literally had this whole meal already served all the wines with each of the courses. It was one of those. If your glass got empty, they just filled it for you. Kind of a dangerous how much wine do you drink? You drink the wine for that course. Then, when that course would finish, they would take your glass, whatever wine you had left, take your plate. They'd bring you a new plate, a new glass, and they'd pour this next wine. We were just going throughout the night. I don't even know all the different wines we were drinking, because it's not like you're ordering them, you're just getting them brought out with this presentation. We get to the last glass. It was just one of those moments where all the food had been amazing. Everything was hitting just right. They get to, I think, what was the best wine of the night. I just sat there and was so blown away. All the conditions were met. I'm in a chateau, I'm in France, just had an incredible multiple plate dinner, all these different wines leading up this culmination of this incredible wine.
Speaker 1:I remember thinking this is why you want to be a wine drinker. This is what it's all about. This is so good, so amazing. I hope you have experiences like that Out of. What we're going to do in the show is help you understand the wine industry more, help you understand how to drink wine more as we get into each of these episodes. That's just going to be an actual part of it. I want you to have your own experiences like that where you say, oh, let me tell you about my favorite glass, that'll get us started.
Speaker 1:I also thought it'd be fun. It's episode one Thought it'd be fun. Let's do a little famous toast. I'll raise my glass to those of you who are watching on video. I found a toast from JRR Tolkien that I think is appropriate. He said this ho ho, ho. To the bottle I go to heal my heart and drown my woe. Rain may fall and wind may blow, and many miles be still to go, but under a tall tree will I lie and let the clouds go sailing by. So to you I say cheers.
Speaker 1:Now back to our subject at hand. The question, then, for you and I to wrestle with is this Is Christianity fragile, robust or anti fragile? Not, what is it in what you've experienced, not what is it the way that maybe most Christians practice it? But really, I'm talking about like what should it be? Like at its essence? Is Christianity fragile? Is that really all this is? This is something just for weak-minded people. Is it robust or is it antifragile? Now, I would say many Christians act as if their faith is fragile.
Speaker 1:I talk to Christians all the time. They're scared of new ideas. They're scared of ways of explaining truth that's different than the way that they understand it. And oftentimes, when you're talking to these Christians, everything looks like a threat, and these can be even Christian doctrines like, hey, this is a different view of hell than the view that you believe, and that can be a threat even though you're saying no, this is a Christian view of hell.
Speaker 1:I've met Christians that are so locked in on their one interpretation and they say things like well, the Bible is clear. It's like a favorite phrase of fragile Christianity the Bible is clear, meaning the way that I understand it is the only way to understand it. Don't challenge this, don't push on this, don't offer another perspective, and I don't think that Christianity is fragile. In fact, studying the history of the church, while there's great expressions and bad expressions, that actually is what has led me to realize the church is way more than the fragile bits of it that we often see today. It's been all sorts of things throughout history, throughout different cultures, and so, no, I don't think Christianity is fragile.
Speaker 1:I think there are Christians that try to act like everything is robust, right and this works great until it doesn't. And so they would say, hey, just believe hard enough and it'll all work out, or just hope that your doubts will eventually go away. This is a robust way of trying to live out your faith and again, for some people that works and certainty plays in here, like if you can be so certain that you're right and just banish your doubts, then yeah, then you're trying to live with a robust faith, but I would say from my experience, this eventually does break down, and this eventually keeps you from exploring and growing and getting all that Christianity has for you. See, I would say that only when we see our faith as anti-fragile can we tap into the full power of the gospel, can we fully see this and I have just explored last few years that the gospel itself is wrapped up in this image, and it's a much better way of living out our faith.
Speaker 1:Now, the author, nassim Taleb one of the guys behind this idea of what is this concept of anti-fragility he said it like this. He said wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. Now, notice the difference there. Right, a candle is fragile, and so a little breeze can blow and put out a candle, but a fire is anti-fragile. A fire is going to get stronger. Think of a bonfire it's going to get stronger as wind is applied to it, and so it's the same stimulus creating dramatically different results. And I think this is what we see when it comes to our faith as well.
Speaker 1:Why do some Christians react differently than others? Well, some Christians are holding on to a fragile faith, some are robust and some are trying to lean into this anti-fragile idea of a different way of living. So how do we have a faith like that? How do we have a fire when it comes to our pursuit of Jesus? Now, I would actually say we get this concept of anti-fragility from Jesus himself.
Speaker 1:Now, this is not explicitly taught in the Gospels. This is not something that seemed to lead necessarily is going to agree with if he's listening to this, but I would suggest that Jesus on the cross is actually the ultimate moment of anti-fragility. Let me show you the way that Paul says it in Colossians, chapter 2, verse 13 through 15. Paul says when you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, god made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all of our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us. He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross, and having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them by the cross. Now this is wording that if you've read it before, you're like oh yeah, it's beautiful. But this is crazy that just when it looks like death wins, jesus shows more power than evil thought possible. So God has made us alive in Christ through the death of Jesus. Not through Jesus conquering armies and being more powerful than Rome and more powerful than anything they could throw at him. No, through Jesus's death we are made alive.
Speaker 1:This is an image of what it means to be antifragile and I would suggest this is what you see even in the book of Acts. In the early church you see this raw, messy, unorthodox version of how they lived out their faith. And today we have tamed it, we have made it safe. We have said you can go and visit this kind of Christianity on the weekend and you dress up for it, you look nice for it and you say these things and you don't say these things. And we've lost, really, the essence of what it means to have an antifragile faith.
Speaker 1:There's this quote from Mason Meninga, and I think this is so great. He says I love that there are multiple times in the Bible that followers of Jesus escaped a prison. I love that there are not just ones like multiple times in the Bible where Christians are escaping prison. You put that in the same context today We'd be like whoa, they're breaking the law. Whoa, you don't do that. These are the bad guys. Whoa, whoa, whoa, and literally like that, like read the New Testament, like that's in there, like it's just this crazy way of living out their faith.
Speaker 1:And I think many of us we've missed it. We've missed the essence of we don't need to be afraid of all these things that we're afraid of that, literally when we lose, that's when the power of Christ is revealed. And I think one of the things that's so hard for me is so many of the songs we sing in churches today are about God never fails and you could never fail and you could never let us down God. And it's like have you seen the cross? Like that's failure. That is Rome winning, that is Jesus being put to death against his will. And we seemed like, yeah, I like that's cool, but like we don't want to embrace, like Jesus lost and in losing, ultimately won.
Speaker 1:But if you skip past the losing, if you skip past the cross and go no, let's just go to the resurrection, let's just go to the end of the story you miss the power of what it means to be anti-fragile. Paul says in St Corinthians 1-9,. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death, but this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. This is so great. We got the sentence of death, but this was just so that we wouldn't rely on ourselves. This was so that we would realize oh, we actually are serving the God who raises the dead. And, friends, if you follow Jesus, this is the Christianity that we're invited to experience, an anti-fragile faith where we are not afraid of losing, we are not afraid of hardship, we are not afraid of bad things happening, because in those moments when we break, when our fragility is shown, ultimately the anti-fragile message that we are part of emerges. It shines through.
Speaker 1:So let's go back to the quote we began with, robert Bohr great winemakers make great wine period. Great vintages don't make bad winemakers great. If you are anti-fragile, you can make great wine out of a bad vintage. In fact, really, if you're taking this idea that the worst the vintage, the better your chances of making a great wine, if you're understanding this concept of anti-fragility. Now I wanna give you two takeaways from this episode today that are wine themed, but these are obviously metaphors for how you and I can live. My number one takeaway would be this If you understand this concept, don't be afraid of bad vintages. Now, this is obviously, wine speak for a rough year of the growing season and the harvesting season, all that, but if you're a great winemaker, you have less fear of a bad vintage. If you're a bad winemaker, you probably are terrified of a bad vintage.
Speaker 1:If you are pursuing Jesus through the lens of anti-fragility, you don't need to be afraid of a bad vintage. You don't need to be afraid of what would it mean if I lost my job? What would it mean if this bad thing happened? What would you don't need to live in constant fear of those. Now, I'm not saying you would cheer those things to happen or choose them to happen or want them to happen, but if they happen, you don't need to have the same reaction that other people might have, because you understand, oh, I hold this treasure in a clay jar and as this clay cracks, this ultimate treasure emerges. This power that is living in me emerges even more. You and I should be the least fearful of a bad vintage, of hardships in life happening, and that's incredible news of encouragement to go. Oh, if I get this, I don't need to be worried about all the things that could happen. You don't need to be worried about it.
Speaker 1:The second takeaway I would say is this learn to make good wine. Stop blaming the vintage, stop saying yeah, but let me explain. Yeah, but it's too much rain, too much wind, too much sun, too much snow. I hadn't. You know, this thing didn't work out the way I wanted. We got a tough break here, you know, couldn't get a callback there, didn't get that promotion, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:Don't let those things determine what you make out of this season of your life. Learn to make good wine. Learn to say you know what? This is what I've got right now. I'm gonna do something awesome with it. I'm gonna figure out what God wants to do precisely in the midst of this, and that is an anti-fragile way to respond.
Speaker 1:And then, if we understand this, we can just be honest with one another. Right, Like so much of Christianity, hey, how you doing, I'm great, everything's great, perfect, so good. And then we go back and it's like it's not great Though we're not gonna tell anybody and we're gonna keep playing that game but we can learn to make good wine. Going Now, it's been really hard. It's a really hard week, really hard season, really hard month. Let me tell you what's going on. Let me tell you what we're seeing God do in the midst of it and how we're responding to this situation because of our perspective, and I think if we have this kind of a focus, you and I can embrace all sorts of things. You and I can embrace the highs and the lows and the things that work out exactly the way we want it, and the things that we just go. I can't believe that happened. And in all of this we invite the power of God to emerge in supernatural and amazing ways, and this is the invitation for all of us.
Speaker 1:So I wanna close today's episode with a quote.
Speaker 1:I love this quote from the author, sarah Bessie, and she just talks about if you learn to release the fear of all that could happen, you learn to see God in a new way.
Speaker 1:Here's what she says In acknowledging the heaviness of our grief and sorrow, we can broaden our hope and our capacity for joy. We don't need to pretend we aren't angry, that we aren't cynical or afraid, that we aren't feeling hopeless or uncomfortable, anxious or exhausted. Our prayers can be laments of grief or cries for justice and challenge. It's often only in naming those things that we find room to reclaim an imagination for hope and healing. And goodness we get to yell weep, give thanks, sit in silence until we sink down in the love of God that has always been holding us, whether we knew it or not. Friends. You get to sink down into the love of God that is holding you in the good vintages and the bad, that is inviting you to hold this treasure in jars of clay and as you break, the treasure is revealed more and more and more. Let's learn to make great wine Cheers.