March 24, 2026

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“He told them this parable: ‘No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.’”

(Luke 5.36)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

We all have heard it often, and I mentioned it in yesterday’s reflection. It is the lament for those “good old days.” Our remembrance of them is fond. We see them through the lens of younger and more innocent eyes. We embrace them with the hope of a future full of potential. It is all that which draws us back or, more likely, to draw them forward. Of course, what we do not remember is the context around those days. Those days were more sheltered in our living them out and in our remembering. We did not see the rest of the story where trouble was brewing behind the scenes. Where the veil of innocence was thick enough to shield us from the wiles of the world. It would be those things that now rule the day in which we live. The darkness deepened. The veil was torn. Innocence was lost or scarred. Hope became fleeting. Life started retreating. This is what Jesus was addressing when He answered the question of fasting. Behind that question was the accusation of destroying the old days and old ways. Jesus had no intention of doing so. John’s gospel would share this insight, “For God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son so that all who would believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. And He came into the world not to destroy the world but that through Him the world might live.” (John 3.16-17) Matthew remembered these words, “I have not come to do away with the Law. I am not here to abolish the Law. Rather, I have come to fulfill the Law.” (Matthew 5.17-18) Actually Jesus loved those “good old days.” The ones He remembered as good were those shared in the Garden of Eden before the interdiction of righteousness perpetrated by the Serpent, Satan who was the cast out and down Lucifer. He did not share those good old days after that which were brief victories of walking by faith and not by sight. He was not overwhelmed by the good old day memories held dear by His accusers which served them and not Him.

It would be a lesson to be learned by them and His disciples concerning that something new which each succeeding generation would bring to mind. They are consumed with the thoughts of doing things better, seeing things differently and charting new directions that served their own vision over and against the vision of their fathers and their fathers before them. It was a throwing off of the ties of the past and the associated consequences in order to grasp a freedom to take liberties as they saw fit. It is the burden of each generation. The old struggles to hold on to the past. The less old struggle to connect with the young by blending materials and garments hoping the different would someone feel the same. The young press forward to new heights unaware of the steps they take upon those who had gone before them now underfoot. What seems to be forgotten were the only true “good old days” that ever existed before there was a past. Those days were seen only in present terms. The Garden of Eden was the here and now of Adam and Eve’s lives. They had no past. They needed no future. They only knew the days as they were given gloriously day by day. And, if we follow the biblical story literally, those good old days only lasted a day. We all want something more.

It is here that Jesus transitioned into the “taste of new wine.” It was a new wine to those whose mouths had formed to the taste of old wine. You have seen them. Those who are consumed with wine. You may never look at Sadducees and Pharisees or detractors the same way. They will enjoy a new wine disdainfully living off the memory of the old wine their mental memory rehearses. It never lasts long. They spew it out and lament about what can never be. The sorrow is that they never knew that “good old day.” The greater sorrow was that they rejected that “good old day” who stood in front of them as boldly as that first day when Adam and Eve came to be as one. Mighty ones of God, Jesus came that we might have new life. He did not come to restore our old lives or change the future to meet our old dreams. He came to make us new as if we were first born when the earth was called into being. This should be what we long for in our spirit, in our mind, in our soul and in our heart.

TODAY’S PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.