The
I was walking down a commercial street district and heard party-like noises coming from a shop. The door suddenly opened and someone I took to be the host invited me in.
“We’re having a whine tasting party. Join us.”
I glanced up at the shop sign and it said The Whine Shop. How unusual. It had an “h” in the word wine. Whine? Maybe it was old English.
There was something… familiar about the place. While it all struck me all as a bit odd, I walked in.
At first, I did not recognize the vintages on the wine racks. It was filled with unfamiliar wine names like No Blush Wine for the Sexually Immodest, The Champaign of Chagrin, and a particularly foul smelling concoction called Bitter Root Wine. Wait. I did recognize a vintage, The Shiraz of Sorrow, but how?
There were many people at the sampling tables but I quickly realized that most were not sampling wines, but drinking themselves into a blind stupor.
Disgusted, I turned to my host about the drunkenness of my fellow tasters. “I am not familiar with most of these vintages. What kind of wine shop is this?
My beguiling host smiled and assured me that, in his wine shop, he only served familiar spirits. And, gesturing to a table, surely I had noticed the The Shiraz of Sorrow?
He poured a small sample into a beautiful goblet and placed it before me. Connoisseur that I am, I picked it up and, following wine tasting protocol, expertly swirled the wine in my goblet to first smell, then taste. As I inhaled the familiar bouquet of the whine, my mind was flooded with memory of tragedy and times of great sorrow from my life. It was seductive, intoxicating.
Knowing that I am called to bring every thought captive into obedience to Christ, I willed myself away from inhaling the mesmeric aroma of The Shiraz of Sorrow and, shaking myself sober, I asked my curiously attentive host, “How did you know I used to drink this vintage?”
Again, he smiled a beguiling smile and assured me that he was a master vintner and he brewed wines perfect to not only the occasion, but to the individual.
I protested telling him I could not consume this wine. It had nearly ruined my life. He countered, “You do not consume my wines; they consume you. Now, my friend, drink.”
Like an addict swearing off his drug of choice, my hands trembled at the thought of one sip. One harmless sip and then I would stop. It was only a sip, was it not?
I glanced around at the slobbering drunks in the room and watched them drink in their familiar potions and poisons. The Shiraz of Sorrow kept past offenses alive, causing me to murmur and complain against God instead of worshiping him. And in a cold moment of clarity, I understood the misspelling on the shop door.
With finality, I poured out the sample wine into the discard bucked and turned my goblet upside down and slammed it on the table to refuse any more wine, giving the ultimate wine tasting insult.
My host looked disappointed. “You don’t care for this vintage? Then may I suggest…” I held up my hand to silence him. “The only vintage I seek is the wine of God’s Spirit, the new wine. But you don’t offer that here, do you? And your Whine Shop does not honor God, does it?”
“Alas, no. We do not honor God here. But we do have many Christians who drink here with damning regularity. Perhaps a bottle to go?” he suggested.
I’ve left my whining, murmuring and complaining behind. I have chosen not to drink from The Shiraz of Sorrow ever again. I lifted up my hands and put on the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness and walked out the door of the Whine Shop worshiping God, suddenly tasting the sweet wine of His Spirit.
1 Peter 5: 8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
Bryan Hupperts © 2009
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