Someone's coming
Monday March 6, 2004 Mark 1:1-8
Someone is coming, said John
People streamed out of the city and out of the villages, gathering at a spot where the river runs through the desert. There they confessed their sins and were baptized. Six hundred years ago their ancestors had heard a voice calling out ‘Prepare the way, level the paths.” That meant that someone was coming. For six hundred years they had waited for someone to come.
That voice still calls; over the waste land of our finite lives, over our half remembered sorrows, and our well remembered joys. “Make a way, level the paths.’ For whom? For God who rules the winds and rides on the waters. Why would he need us to make a way? But we understand, and like those people long ago we hastily take down the barriers and remove the obstacles that would hinder him because he only enters hearts that make him welcome.
This washing in the waters of Jordan was their attempt to prepare the way. To shake off the apathy and unbelief, to wash away all that they hated or were ashamed of in themselves. To feel new all over and know what is was like to hope, and to thrill with anticipation. .
Someone is coming said John.
Water: so transient a cleansing. Newness: so soon to fade away unless - unless the very Spirit of God cleansed their inner selves as the waters cleaned their outer selves. Unless the Creator would recreate their weary hearts and tired minds.
Someone is coming said John. The promised someone came and they killed him.
A new voice speaks, I am he who was, and is, and is to come." No more waiting. The one we have longed for comes. He comes willingly into every heart that is made open to him. With him comes forgiveness and every cleansing is effective and by him every earth-bound heart is made new. Because of him we begin to know God the way the nursing child learns to know his mother, through the union of the two. He has come, and he has come to stay.
(Isaiah 40:3 Ezekiel 11:19 Revelation 1:8)
Someone is coming, said John
People streamed out of the city and out of the villages, gathering at a spot where the river runs through the desert. There they confessed their sins and were baptized. Six hundred years ago their ancestors had heard a voice calling out ‘Prepare the way, level the paths.” That meant that someone was coming. For six hundred years they had waited for someone to come.
That voice still calls; over the waste land of our finite lives, over our half remembered sorrows, and our well remembered joys. “Make a way, level the paths.’ For whom? For God who rules the winds and rides on the waters. Why would he need us to make a way? But we understand, and like those people long ago we hastily take down the barriers and remove the obstacles that would hinder him because he only enters hearts that make him welcome.
This washing in the waters of Jordan was their attempt to prepare the way. To shake off the apathy and unbelief, to wash away all that they hated or were ashamed of in themselves. To feel new all over and know what is was like to hope, and to thrill with anticipation. .
Someone is coming said John.
Water: so transient a cleansing. Newness: so soon to fade away unless - unless the very Spirit of God cleansed their inner selves as the waters cleaned their outer selves. Unless the Creator would recreate their weary hearts and tired minds.
Someone is coming said John. The promised someone came and they killed him.
A new voice speaks, I am he who was, and is, and is to come." No more waiting. The one we have longed for comes. He comes willingly into every heart that is made open to him. With him comes forgiveness and every cleansing is effective and by him every earth-bound heart is made new. Because of him we begin to know God the way the nursing child learns to know his mother, through the union of the two. He has come, and he has come to stay.
(Isaiah 40:3 Ezekiel 11:19 Revelation 1:8)
posted by Jessie Coates at 9:55 PM
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