Crushed into Wine

We all have those days that really suck. Those times when it seems like everything goes wrong that could have gone wrong. Maybe those days are frequent in your job, maybe they're rare. But we all have them.

Sometimes, it's comforting to try to make sense of those experiences. What is God trying to teach me? Sometimes we can see a potential purpose. But most of the time, it seems meaningless. It doesn't add up for us.

I read something a few days ago that really speaks to this in Oswalt Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest. Chambers notes that God uses every day circumstances to crush us as a vintner crushes grapes. He says that "God can never make us wine if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us" (p. 274). Chambers also states that "if we're going to be made into wine, we have to be crushed--you cannot drink grapes."

Sometimes, the crushing doesn't make any sense to us. Try as we might, we cannot find a reason or purpose in our suffering. This isn't a hopeful blog post in that sense. But God uses those circumstances in ways we may never know this side of heaven to shape us, to crush us. He calls us to be faithful in them.