I recently left a movie theater scratching my head.

For two hours I’d watched the long, meandering film hoping to find some sense of continuity, consistency, or meaning. But couldn’t. When the closing credits rolled I could only think of how it didn’t end as much as it had just stopped. Frustrated, I suspect I was in the minority because the movie had been critically acclaimed.

The point is that there are stories in search of meanings - and there are meanings in search of stories.

There are stories that either hide their meaning or have none, and there are meanings that are so profound, so desperately important - that any story fails to do it justice.

This is what’s happening in one of the most fabulous stories in the Bible, which we’ll hear this weekend, the wine-making miracle at the wedding in Cana.

We know what happens, Jesus, his mom, and friends are invited to a wedding where the wine runs out. Nearby are some pots of water, which Jesus turns to wine.

We discover more in the exaggerated details: Jesus makes 780 bottles of wine - enough for 3,000 guests - and it’s fine quality wine.

The point is that God’s desire to love and care for us is that big.

And the contemplation of this loving care is crucial, because we desire more than anything to be loving people and enter into that rest of knowing that God’s got it all under control. 

After all, we suspect that the cure for our nagging anxiety is in a deeper connection to God whose nature is to love and provide for us more than we will ever, ever comprehend.

So let us raise our glasses to this love, acknowledging the boundaries of human expression and the glorious boundlessness it will always fail to contain. God is hard at work, caring and providing for us, more than we can ever know.