Flexibility: The Key to New and Greater Purposes
New cloth (not yet shrunken by washing) and old cloth should not be sewn together. New wine (unfermented grape juice) should not be put into old, inflexible containers.
Understanding conditions is important. Being flexible and willing to change and adapt throughout life is also important. The cloths represented conditions and the new wine/wineskins represented change and flexibility/inflexibility.
The science and logic behind what Jesus said is easy to understand. What is more difficult is to pay attention to the changing conditions and dynamics of our lives and activities. In context, Jesus talked about conditions in His day in which religious leaders, like the Pharisees, who resisted Christ and the then-emerging Kingdom of God. Like old stiff wineskin containers, their inflexibility to the expanding "new wine" of God's purpose was unacceptable.
Today, we must evaluate our conditions, and our hearts, to determine what things, if any, may prevent us from being containers of "new wine" –– in whatever ways this may be applicable to our lives.
