Advent Devotion for Wednesday, December 13

From Mark 1:1-8 (Read it here: http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=33017894 )

What do we make of this wild man, who lived in the desert , eating locusts and wild honey, dressed in a camel pelt? He came among the people and demanded repentance, demanded that the people turn away from a reprobate way of life toward a type of living that was truly alive. And to drive the point home, he baptized those who were willing to change, dipping them beneath the water to symbolize cleansing and new life.

It’s impossible to know what we would have made of John the Baptist. But we can get a pretty good idea by looking at how we treat the John the Baptists of our lives. Who are the John the Baptists of our lives? They are those people who are on the margins, people we don’t find respectable, who challenge us to change something in our lives.

For some of us, the homeless may be John the Baptist. We think the way they dress and smell and look and live are beneath us. Yet their way of life can profoundly challenge us to repent, to turn around. They challenge us to live differently, to re-evaluate what’s really important in our lives, to ask hard questions about what we truly need and want in life. The homeless have much in common with John the Baptist–and if we ignore the homeless, we probably would have ignored John.

For some of us, John the Baptist may be found in people who are more conservative or more liberal than us. In our society, conservatives are challenged to stay pure, to listen only to conservative voices. To associate with liberals is to risk one’s purity. Liberals are also tempted to think conservatives are backward and beneath them and thus not worth associating with. When we expose ourselves to other ways of thinking, we let in John the Baptist-like voices from the margins, which can challenge us to repent. If we ignore Christians who believe differently, we may just have ignored John.

Finally, for some of us, John the Baptist may be found in those people we like the least. Often times, when a person is especially irritating to us, it is because that person has a lot to teach us; we are threatened by this, and experience that threat as aggravation. It is precisely by becoming vulnerable and listening to that person that we can grow and change and repent sometimes. We may not agree with all or even much that that person says. But when we make ourselves open to those voices, we open the possibility for our own growth into Christ’s image. If we ignore those who bother us, we may just have ignored John the Baptist.

Don’t ignore the John the Baptist in your life today!