I never fully grasped the concept of becoming a new creation in Christ until just now. Seriously. Here I am in bed lying next to Alex with one dog on my feet and the other on my hips; I stripped off my clothes after an early morning gardening frenzy so I’m butt naked. Looking around the room, hearing the snores of my bed companions I spot the photo of me with my two girls, a photo I had taken at J.C. Penney’s back in 1987 after I’d made up my mind to divorce Wayne; funny how I clearly remember getting into my Honda civic and driving to the mall with that one objective. To memorialize the singular point in time I realized I had to start a new life. Just a few weeks earlier I’d finally won the battle to have both girls baptized in the Christian faith, something that was a bone of contention between me and Wayne; he only relented when I agreed to his demands that I have my tubes tied—he wanted no more children. That was the final straw.
All of those thoughts, emotions, the resentment, and clarity of purpose are visible to me in that photo;, I belonged to God and could now teach my daughters about love and life and Christ. Emboldened by taking a photo minus my husband, I drove back home and announced my decision to him. He wasn’t shocked or angry; he was surprised however that I had the nerve to tell him what I wanted. But then my baby sister Karen died two months later. It would be 18 months before I could get up the nerve to go through with the divorce.
Looking at that photo I see the same person I am now; well, not exactly the same. I’ve grown closer to God, flourished in his ever loving grace, and put behind me the old me. I am a new creation. From that moment when I chose Jesus. And I’m older, a bit wiser, a lot fluffier and wrinkly, but that wine, oh the wine of sanctification becomes sweeter with every passing year. Thirty nine years ago I became a new creation, full of new wine in a new wine skin; only now, the wine has aged along with the wine skin.
And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does the wine is old and, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” (Mark 2:22, ESV)
