Lessons from JB
We’ve been making a path here at home, it’s shape and style have been much ‘debated’, and it’s not leading to the Lord but to the greenhouse. It’s actually hard work if it’s done properly. If we take short cuts now, don’t clear the ground, don’t level it, set boundaries, get the foundations right then in a few years we will have to start all over again. While I’m mesmerised by the cement mixer, I can’t help but think of John the Baptist, the ultimate path maker. These are the life lessons I’ve learnt from The big John.
The wilderness Is where God does his best work in me.
It is always those stripped back, hard times that I know the presence of God in a depth I can never find in places of comfort. Oh how I love comfort, but I can’t reach Jesus in the same way from a place of plenty. I always leave the desert changed, wiser, humbler, learning to choose intimacy over ease. Perhaps one day we will begin to run to the trials knowing the treasure that’s found within them.
I have been born with a purpose
There is some definite work that only I (oh yes and you too) have been created to do in the words of St John Henry Newman. Even in the womb, John the Baptist was aware of his calling, when Zachariah spoke the first words in months, proclaiming “His name is to be John” all around wondered what this child would be. There is just as much a calling on your life. Do you hear it? Yours won’t be the same as mine, it will be crafted especially for you, for your gifting, for your nature. I pray we don’t miss it. I pray we spend our lives living it.
Even when people know you are speaking truth they won’t always stand beside you to defend it.
It’s a harsh world, not everyone will have the grace or integrity to stand by you when you speak out for truth. It’s hard and painful to discover when you were part of a choir, to find you are now a solo voice crying out in the wilderness….but let me assure you there is no more beautiful a voice to Gods ears than yours at that moment. Though you may not hear them, the whole of heaven is crying ‘encore’ at your song. Those temple curtains frame your stage. Keep singing. Keep proclaiming.
Sometimes we cut the path, sometimes we breeze along one cut by the sweat and tears of another.
I have scars from cutting paths, from forging new ways for the people behind me to walk through. I’ve been broken when, even then it wasn’t cleared enough for them to risk walking it. But nothing is wasted, and most days I walk a path that someone else has shed blood, sweat and tears forging for me. We are each a little Baptist, carving out routes to Christ and treading unconsciously those been made before us. Keep walking, keep clearing.. the light is just ahead of you.
He knows he’s not the saviour.
Oh I am growing in this revelation daily. I am not God, I have zero control over anything but my own choices, and even those I have mostly given over in submission to Him. There are so many more convenient gods, gods with dusty eyes as Jeremiah said, but none compare, whatever or whoever I place on that throne falls short, fails, disappoints, the more they are worshipped the more they disappoint. Thank God, and I mean really thank Him that he is all he is, beyond us, above us and before us.
….And finally, Sometimes Jesus lets us to minister to him.
It seems an impossibility that we could ever minister to God, we think it’s all about what He does for us. He may not be asking us to Baptise Him in the Jordan but, oh friend, we can console His heart. How? Lay beside him in the garden of gethsemane and whisper of the joy of the resurrection. Hold his face while he is scourged for you, kneel and hold his gaze whilst he is mocked and ridiculed. Wait and pray at the foot of the cross. A God who dwells outside of time means you can be present to Him in these moments, anytime spent meditating on His passion draws you closer and that soothes his sacred heart.
He shows us how to give it all, John the Baptist, the best man ushers the groom to the bride then bows out. His work done, his mission fulfilled, a straight path indeed made for the Lord.
While we stumble that path to the light, John the Baptist, Pray for us.
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