Are we content to fulfil our duties to God in a formal or mechanical way?  Or do we try to give him a little more love than we feel like giving?  For, like the servants at Cana, what we do, we do for him; and when it all seems useless and unrewarding, our very willingness to do it is a token that it is truly done for him.  So when the practices of the Christian religion seem dull and uninteresting, when our emotions are cold and uninspired, then the persistent application of the will to dutiful obedience is a sure sign of our love even if our heart seems empty.

And when we have faced that test and struggled on, then what seemed a monotonous and almost pointless religious routine, becomes transfigured into a means of pleasing him, into something that is radiant with inward joy.  He has changed our water into wine.

That is the reward of dutiful obedience to God, and the more faithful and dogged the obedience, the fuller the joy.