Wineskin In The Smoke

HOPE FOR THE DRY & WEARY SOUL

B Y MIKE MAZYCK

“Though I have become like a wineskin in the smoke, I do not forget Your statutes.” – Psalm 119:83

In ancient times they would store wine by hang ing it in animal-skin pouches. But if one was left hanging for too long while the smoke from the fire was nearby, it would become dry, cracked, and brittle. Eventually the wineskin would become unusable.

Do you ever feel like the Psalmist, like a “wineskin in the smoke” ? Maybe that’s where you’re at today – dry and weary in your soul, worn out and exhausted with the trials of this life. Are you all alone and trying to find your path in the midst of the darkness? Do you feel like you are losing the battle? Or maybe your wineskin has grown dry from your own self-inflicted smoke: You’ve been knocked down once again by that sin that you just can’t seem to conquer! Do you find yourself on the ground now, wondering “How will I get back up again?”

Please do not think that these feelings you are experiencing are foreign to God’s children. Oh no, you are in good company. Saints throughout the ages have gone through times of smoky wineskins: John Bunyan wrote of long seasons of spiritual darkness. Famous missionary David Brainerd filled his diary with entries of depression and despondency. Mother Teresa’s private writings revealed decades of inward darkness and feelings of abandonment by God. The great preacher Charles Spurgeon was a lifelong sufferer of severe depression, and even bedridden at times because of it. Martin Luther’s wineskins became so engulfed in the smoke that he once wrote, “For more than a week I was close to the gates of death and hell.” And may we not forget the description of our Lord Jesus Himself: “He was a man of sorrows and

acquainted with grief.” (Isaiah 53:3)

Perhaps, though, our most extensive view of a man who continually found himself being smothered by the smoke was the Psalmist himself. King David littered the psalms with lines of despair, loneliness, and abandonment by God. He cries out in the 22nd Psalm, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest” (Psalm 22:1–2).

His soul is withered and brittle in the 63rd Psalm, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul

thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1). The Psalms show us a man who was a wineskin continually immersed in the smoke; a man who pleaded with God from places of anxiety and fear; a man who cried for relief from the fumes of depression and darkness; a man who begged to be released from the vapors of his ailing physical body. A man blinded by the smoke of loneliness and despair. And perhaps most importantly, he pleads when his wineskin has

grown dry and brittle from his own self-inflicted smoke, the entangling cords of his own sin.

These are the seasons and emotions not only of the Psalmist but of saints throughout the ages. Some may

even say – and I would agree – that those who know God most deeply will find themselves entrenched in the thickest smoke. We must be careful when we pray dangerous prayers; when we dare to tell God, “Conform me to Your image”; when we dare to tell Him, “I want to go deeper, I want to know You more intimately.” Oh, He will answer those prayers if we really mean them. But make no mistake about it, the fire and the smoke are His scalpel of choice. Let us consider the words of a great theologian, Wolfgang Musculus:

“A bottle [wineskin] in the smoke has very little inflation, fatness, moisture, beauty. Thus God wastes away, debases, and empties his people, while he exercises them with tribulations and the disquiet of hoping and waiting. The glory and eagerness of the flesh must be emptied, that the Divine gifts may find room, and the remembrance of the commandments of God may be restrained, which cannot be well kept in bottles which are swollen, inflated, and filled.”

But what shall we do in those smoky seasons? How do we survive when the scalpel is upon us and the Surgeon has given no anesthetic? We can take comfort in the fact that the great Psalmist did not leave us

without hope:

“Though I have become like a wineskin in the smoke, I do not forget Your statutes.”

His statutes… His word… His truth. It is the only answer He has for us. It is the only salve that brings moisture to a smoky wineskin. It is the only spring from which we can quench our thirsty hearts. There is only one Power that will extinguish those fumes we choke on: Christ Himself. And where do we find Him? In His Word – He is the Word! (John 1:1)

My friend, the farther along I go on this journey, I realize more and more the beautiful simplicity of the Christian life; All of our happiness, purpose, joy, peace, and contentment hinges upon one simple question: Will we dedicate our entire lives to what is written in that Book? Will we consume it every day? Will we study it? Will we meditate upon it? Will we memorize it? Will we believe it? Will we orient our entire world around it? This is the only solution there ever has been, and ever will be, to our smoky wineskins.

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.” (Psalm 1:1–3)