One of our best Christmas presents this past holiday was a dead looking, papery-coated lump stuck in a hand-made pottery bowl full of gravel. Our eight-year-old daughter Soren made the pottery base at school, filled it with crushed rocks, and the teacher stuck in the middle of this mess (sorry . . . this loveliness) a bulb. All we had to do, Soren instructed, was put this lump in the middle of the table, next to the windows, and add water. In fact, she said proudly as she held up her art-work, it would make a great centerpiece to the table!

Sure enough, after a few days some spindly, hair-like projections began to worm their way out of the lump and down into the gravel. A few days later, thicker greenish white sprouts began to burst out of the top of that previously lifeless looking lump. Now in mid-January, the transformation is almost complete. Two long green shoots have climbed about eight inches high and at the tip of each stalk a plump bud has formed. A few more days of pale winter sunlight and the mystery of "what kind of bulb is this" will finally be revealed.

Forcing bulbs to bloom in the dead of winter is a practice that takes a lot of faith. It's hard to imagine anything that looks less promising than a dormant flower bulb. Too hard to be an onion, its papery skin sloughing off like it has some scrofulous disease, there's nothing to suggest that new life and rare beauty lurk just beneath its surface. Its wizened, dried up appearance gives no clue that the bulb is brimming with new life.

What eternally optimistic soul ever thought of squandering water on such a poor prospect? Who had the foresight and the faith to try and coax life out of such obviously dead things? Whose eyes first glimpsed the promise and possibility locked up inside such a hardened, withered shell?

We take for granted the common knowledge that tells us . . . that every winter is followed by a spring; that out of the hard, barren soils new life, new plants, flowers, crops, fruits will emerge.

We can wait confidently through all the winter ice and snow because we know and understand why the warmer, brighter days are coming.

Our confidence comes from observable scientific knowledge. We know how the rotation of the earth around the sun affects the length of our days and the warmth of our climates. About other less measurable matters we're less bold. If results and conclusions can't be nailed down with calculated numbers or provable facts, we back away from declaring any firm commitments, or taking any leaps of faith.

In today's gospel text Mary or as John always refers to her, the mother of Jesus has no doubts. Confronted with a problem beyond her abilities the social faux pas of running out of wine at the wedding celebration she confidently and confidentially turns to Jesus for a solution. Yet notice that Mary never asks Jesus to do anything. She simply lays the problem out before him and awaits his response.

Mary's confidence isn't in Jesus' ability to take any specific action on the matter. Rather her confidence is in Jesus himself, in his very nature.

Even when Jesus' response to his mother sounds more like a reprimand or "don't-bother-me" rebuff than a courteous reply, Mary remains confident in her son and entrusts the situation to him. Jesus' words suggest he's looking far beyond the wedding feast in Cana, even all the way to the cross on Golgotha. But Mary remains focused on the needs that surround them at the moment, as her indirect directions indicate.

Perhaps only a mother could get away with micro-managing the wine-shortage problem without ever telling her son what to do. Although Jesus' first response to the problem reveals no inclination to deal with it, Mary responds by going to the servants and telling them to do "whatever he tells you" (verse 5). It's Mary's indirect-directive that leads Jesus to perform what John carefully records as the first of his signs (verse 11).

But Mary's actions are more than mere motherly manipulation. She alone knows of Jesus' miraculous birth. She alone has watched him grow and mature into manhood. It's hard not to believe that Mary was aware of Jesus' baptism and John the Baptist's testimony about her son. But she's certainly aware that Jesus has arrived at this wedding feast with an entourage, with disciples. The carpenter's son was beginning to take a new path. It's to that son, this man whose voice and vision had already found followers, that Mary goes with confidence and trust.

Mary trusted that Jesus' actions and words would fit the needs of the situation. She did not know what he would do or how he would do it. But still she had the confidence to order the servants to "do whatever he tells you."

Mary's trust opens the door for transformation.

Jesus' budding ministry was all about transformation. Everything Jesus did throughout the course of his time on earth was a variation on this same theme of transformation: turning water into wine, turning the lame into walkers, turning the blind into see-ers, turning haters into lovers, and doubters into believers.

But there can be no transformation without trust.

Do you have trust that can lead to transformation? Can you trust the transformations that God has already begun in you, as you wait for the unknown flower to appear from all the gravel and gunk?

Or do you never venture past the safe harbor of informed response based on information. Are you information-based or transformation-based? The gospel isn't about Jesus offering us new information. The gospel is about Jesus offering us transformation. Jesus turns the ordinary into the extraordinary, the water of our lives into the best wine heaven can make.

The greatest advancements in science medicine, political policies, economic growth all have in common an element of the unknown. Information brought leaders to a precipice a decisive movement in time and place. But it has always been some unseen force some yielding to that which lies beyond the provable and knowable that has enabled history's greatest leaders to take that last step forward into new, uncharted territory.

Everyone told Columbus he would sail off the edge of the world . . . but on trust he kept going all the way off the map. Everyone told the American colonists that they could never win a victory and freedom from English rule . . . but on trust they staged their seemingly impossible revolution. Everyone told Lewis and Clark they would never find their way through the uncharted western wilderness . . . but on trust they journey to the Pacific coast and back again. Everyone told you . . . what? William J. Wyne is pastor of Second Baptist Church of Battle Creek, Michigan. Dr. Wyne tells of his pastoral involvement in the sickness of a little angel of a girl whose name was Tina (her name has been changed).

She was about four or five years old and was the seventh child born to this family. She had six other sisters. Their love for each other and their love for God and church knitted this family together. Tina had been under the watchful care of one of the best nephrologists in renal care. She had several excellent matches from her family. Her father was one of the them, and he decided that he would be the donor of a kidney for her. The family was present for the surgery, other members of the family accompanied them, and the transplant itself went well. They were told by the physicians that she would spend at least four to five days in ICU as all transplant patients did, and the father would recuperate in the renal unit until his release.

Tina's first couple of days were as expected, but during the third night something happened. An aneurysm in her brain developed. The family prayed and hoped for the best, but the aneurysm took her at the close of the following day. When we told the family that we had lost her, the tears and hurt were overwhelming. The father was still sore from the operation and limited in his ability to move around. He wanted to be with her, he wanted to see her, other members of the family had been in the room with her, but he couldn't go. We pushed Tina out of her unit into his room and cleared the room so only the family could be there together. I heard him say, "Daddy loves you, and Daddy did all that he could."

I watched as his other daughters surrounded his bed, and the mother crawled up in the bed with her. They brushed Tina's long hair. I remember hearing one of them saying, "Tina, you've been with us. Now you're with God." As I held two of the sisters, I also remember the older one crying, saying, "God help us. God give our family strength." Then there began the soft moaning of a familiar hymn that I had learned to love and appreciate while pastoring in Columbus, Mississippi.

'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, just to take him at his word, just to rest upon his promise, just to know, "thus saith the Lord." Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him! How I've proved him o'er and o'er! Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus! O for grace to trust him more!

William J. Wyne, "A Faith for Life's Fires," The African American Pulpit, 6 (Summer 2003), 90.

As we sing this song together, ask yourself: Can I trust Jesus enough to do whatever he tells me to do? It's only this kind of trust that can lead to transformed lives, and transformed deaths.