“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins.”

What does it take for an organization that is 109 years old to make a change to their primary revenue generating product and to do something brand new?  Old organizations that have a proven business model and successful products are not prone to just change things up.  But, that is exactly what happened this week with Girl Scouts of America.  Yes, it is that time of the year when we have neighbors, friends, community members reaching out to us to sell us those amazing cookies.  Well, this year we will be able to purchase a new Girl Scout cookie, the Adventurefuls – “a brownie-inspired bites topped by caramel-flavored creme.”

Sounds and looks mmgood, don’t they? While it might be easy to overlook what it took to bring something new to market, we shouldn’t.  We should instead be inspired that even at 109 years old, there is still room for “New” and new works!

To get to “new” in our lives we can’t hold onto “old”.  The Parable of the wineskins gets right to it in that we can’t be the new creation that God wants us to be if we are not willing to change out all that keeps us in our old spirit.  We’ve all been through it and know others who want so desperately to live in new skins but we aren’t willing to sacrifice and leave behind those parts of our lives that keep us stuck in the old.  All around us in our work are areas that can contribute to holding us back.  Areas like, power, ego, achieving, politics, etc. run amok in companies and each of them are trying to keep us right back in the places that we are trying to abandon. Here is the great news.  God doesn’t want us to live in the old.  He wants us to be new creatures who can bring glory to Him in our work and lives.  He loves to help us overcome and conquer.  Today, we just have to let Him do His new works in us by shedding those old skins.

Reference:  Mark 2:22 (New Living Translation)