Once there was a man who settled in the west to establish a farm. The land was swampy and damp, and there was much rain in the region. So the farmer set to work, felling trees and draining the land. After a number of years of hard work, the farmer managed to turn the swampy, damp land into a productive farm.
So pleased was he with the success of his hard work, that he decided to fell more trees and put in more drains. He purchased more land and followed the trusted methods which had served him so well. But as he continued in his old traditions, he did not notice that the environment he was living in was changing. No longer was the problem so much one of too much rainfall and swampy land, now it was a problem of draught and insufficient water. But no matter, the farmer knew the best way forward was to carrying on digging drains, emptying swamps, and felling trees. He was sure of this, for he had seen this method work before, and from his own experience he knew it was the right thing to do.
One morning he awoke to find it sunny, as it had been for the last two weeks. He noticed the grass getting very dry and the crops starting to wilt. He thought perhaps he should try a different farming method, but all he knew was to fell trees and drain the land. What else could he do? He knew no other method. So he carried on with the old methods which had served him so well in the past.
A few months later the farmer lost his farm. So enslaved had he become to his old ways, he did not see that the environment around him had been changed, and the old problem of swampy, wet land had given way to a completely different problem. The problem had changed, but his commitment to the old way of doing things blinded him and led to a catastrophic loss. He was completely undone, he lost the farm.
This story was one told by Thomas Arnold, in which he illustrated the tendency we have as humans to slavishly follow our old way of doing things, without paying sufficient attention to the changes going on around us. He observed that as humans we very often take something which is good, but we become so enslaved to it, that it becomes a positive evil. It is all too easy to become slaves to tradition, traditions which worked in the past in a different time when circumstances were different. We do not pay sufficient attention to how things are different now from how they were many years ago.
No doubt this is why Jesus Christ taught that:
No one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’ (Luke 5:37-39)
New wine needs new wineskins. Without them, we lose the wine and the skins.
But aaaaahh the old is good! We don’t want to do things in a new way, for the old way always used to work well enough.
Jesus Christ teaches us that ‘New wine must be put into fresh wineskins.’
Maybe we need to reflect on that.
Otherwise we may lose the farm.
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