Two-buck-chuck

I love a great glass of wine. I can’t hep it. I am from Napa Valley so it’s sort of like a professional football player pointing at the sky to give God credit for a win…it just goes with the territory. Anyway-I bought my dad a wine aerator for his birthday last December and this last week, while staying at their house, I came across it. I have never tried one myself so I thought I better give it a shot. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a device that is supposed to speed up the process of giving wine the proper amount of air to be drinkable ASAP. I mean, who really wants to wait 30 minutes to an hour to drink a glass of wine after being opened? Not I. So here’s the conclusion from my very minimal research and personal experience: it seems that it can make a $4 bottle of wine taste more like a $10 bottle, but can also make a $50 bottle taste like, well, a $10 bottle. So, if you want to upgrade your two-buck-chuck (that’s Trader Joe’s $2.99 gem, if you aren’t aware) you are in luck; use the aerator. But if you have been aging a Mondavi Cab for 3 years, practice patience and just decanter it and give it God’s good time to breath. A wine-specialist made an observation that actually made me laugh. He talked about that one of the benefits of an aerator is that is rids the wine of sulfides that  “can also be the cause of egg or onion-related odors associated with sulfur. Both the reduction of sulfur dioxide and sulfides can allow the brighter flavors of the wine’s fruit to shine through.” Well, I don’t know about you, but regardless of your level of expertise in wine consumption, I think most of us can agree that we would prefer to sip on something that does not smell like eggs or onions.

I have a couple thoughts about this contraption that help me understand God in a unique way. One is that I am like that $4 bottle in need of an upgrade to a $10 bottle. If God is like an aerator if this is possible; I have “bitter tannins” (that’s fancy wine-talk for “yucky taste”).  In some cases, such as with tannins, aeration does not literally remove the chemicals, but allows competing flavor and aroma to sneak to the forefront thus toning down the intensity of the former.” Whoa. Did you catch that? With God as my aerator, He filters my “bitter tannins” through Him. Instead of just extracting all the character defects, His “competing flavor and aroma sneak to the forefront thus toning down the intensity of the former.” He can replace or even enhance them with the aromatic fruit of the the Spirit; ” love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.” Sometimes what I think of as defects of character are just positive characteristics that have gotten out of proportion for one reason or another.

The other thought relates to the time this device can save you. It speeds up the process of the drinkability of the wine. I am free to do life on my own. That’s a gift God gives us. But let me just say from my own experience, that the time I spend trying to wait it out on my own or force solutions without filtering  it all through God’s plans for me, is time well-wasted. It can take me years to figure out on my own what God can teach me in a manageable amount of time if I am surrendered to him at every turn. Whether you drink wine or not, I think you can appreciate the comparison between drinking a wine-cooler vs a $100 cabernet. When I live life doing it on my own, on my own agenda, it’s like living a wine-cooler life; weak, watery, immature. A Cabernet is fruity, complex, aged, mature, full ( and full-bodied).  I want to live an aerated cabernet kind of life. One that started out as a 4$ bottle, but with God’s help, using Him as my aerator, I can live my life as a priceless Cab.