What's Your Drink?

I was at a wedding recently where some folks got a bit ‘tipsy’ and began sporting Kung Fu dancing moves.  It was quite entertaining. (FYI -the four steps of drunkenness are alleged to be the jocose, the bellicose, the lachrymose, and finally the comatose stages.) One of my daughter’s friends asked her “how do you guys have fun without drinking?  I have testified to this many times that my wife and I are convinced that we are the last Christians on the planet who don't drink.  She went out after work with her peers not too long ago and they tried to coax her into taking her first drink.  Did I mention we are no longer as vulnerable to teen peer pressure?

I can tell you (no rumor) that I don't drink, chew, smoke, steal, commit adultery, covet, take God's name in vain, or dance (very well that is)  -  take drugs, play cards, or gamble. 

Why not?  Some of those things I just don’t enjoy.  Others are not the “sins that so easily beset me.”  Still others I do not do because of a conviction not to do those things.  I would like to say in all others it is  because I am such a good Christian.  But in reality it is because Christians who gossip are always somewhere in my life keeping track of my sins.  Keeping me accountable.  I don't do these things because people don't think I would and should do them - and I find a kind of wholeness in being who people think I am.  Some would call it integrity.  Reputation is important to me - and I think it should be for a person of God.  Lose even a shred of it, and you can be ruined for life. 

We feel like the Recabites whom Jeremiah tried to spoil.  It was probably at a July 4^th  party when Jeremiah set bowls of wine before the Recabites and said, "Drink some wine!"  But the Recabites said, "We do not drink wine, because our forefathers Jonadab son of Recab gave us this command: 'Neither you nor your descendants must ever drink wine.  Also you must never build houses...but always live in tents. (Jeremiah 35:6-7).  We are still pretty liberal for modern day Racabites, while we don't drink, we don't live in a tent – yet.  But in this economy who knows?  But we really feel comforted since we found this scripture to back up one of our preconceived notions.  At least we know there were others along the way that did not drink and were fairly dogmatic about it.

Like the Recabites, we don't even drink wine for our stomach's sake.  When we lived in Oklahoma where the water was said to be polluted with plutonium we still didn't drink wine.  We  have often discussed this and asked ourselves is it because some Christians think its wrong or because Jesus thinks its wrong?  Well - you know - Jesus drank wine - rats!  He even made his own.  Probably a good year too.  And we don't think Jesus ever sinned.  I know Christians are mixed on the subject. 

One "sister" in at church was castigating her friends who were drinking wine (it was suppose to help prevent Alzheimer's for crying out loud) when one of them asked her, "Why do you speak against our drinking wine? Don't you know that Jesus drank wine?"  "Yes," she said, hanging her head, "but I think I would think a lot more of him if he hadn't."  Then there is the senior adult ladies Sunday School class whose cure all was "rum raisins."  No wonder they couldn't get up the steps to the church. But alas - they were pain free.  And that was good.

Growing up as the son of an alcoholic I observed the problem with alcohol is that the feelings it evokes are not transforming. They are merely transitory. While it is true that a wallflower may bloom into a beautiful rose while "under the influence," it is a hot-house blossom that will wither and curl the moment sobriety returns.

Isaiah knew that his people were parched and thirsted for a quenching gift  - a hand-held divinely-granted drink.  That gift?  Freedom. (Isaiah 43)
 The water Isaiah speaks of is transformative. "What's your drink?"

”What are you thirsty for?”

Few communities are as schizophrenic about an issue as are our particular group.. We even refrain from using any form of alcohol in the communion cup.  Although I have heard of conservative Churches on the east coast using Mogen David (its blessed by the Rabbi, remember?) and are not accused of being wine-bibbers.

Jesus proclaims that "...those who drink of the water that I give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."  Is it any wonder that draughts of such a potent spirituality render me a bit tipsy?

So generous a host is the Holy Spirit, that the Christ followers in Acts are mistaken for drunkards.  The twist? Those blithering, blundering, bullheaded disciples are transformed into articulate, charismatic, courageous spiritual leaders.  The Holy Spirit's living water kept their own spirits buoyant.

So, what’s your drink?  Be careful - you could be "moving your feet" & sporting kung fu moves in the blink of a drink.