December 29, 2019 – John 2:10

Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.
—John 2:10

Wherever God in Christ is working, the best wine is kept until the end.88 Think how true this is of sin. It is indeed the masterpiece of evil. It is the token and the triumph of all sin that it always gives the best wine at the start. That is why people of open and generous natures are often those most bitterly assailed. They do not calculate nor look ahead nor reckon seriously with the morrow. And sin is so fair and pleasant at the outset and hides its afterward with such consummate mastery that the reckless heart becomes an easy prey. Don’t you think that, now, if all the miseries of drunkenness were to meet one who is on the verge of drinking—don’t you think that person would cry out for help and turn from the accursed vice and flee? But drunkenness does not begin like that. It begins in the social hour and happy comradeship; only afterward there are the blighted prospects and the shattered body and the ruined home. But sin is cunning and conceals all that; it sets on the table a delicious vintage and only afterward—but always afterward—that which is worse. If sin conceals the worse behind tomorrow, may it not conceal the worst behind the grave?
—George H. Morrison