Mark
1:1-8
“Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a
leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and
wild honey.”
(Mark
1:6)
John the Baptist had a singular calling. The prophet Isaiah spoke of it hundreds of
years before John’s birth. “I am sending my messenger ahead of you who
will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare
the way of the Lord.” That was
John’s mission: prepare the way of the Lord.
From what we know of John, he was a man who took this
calling seriously. He cared little for
the kinds of things you and I appreciate, like a roof overhead, warm clothing,
and a varied menu. Scripture tells us
that he lived in the desert, wore a camel hair suit, and ate locusts and
honey. This was a man whose passion
allowed him little room for anything else. Some would view this picture as too extreme and cite
it as further evidence of the difficulty in answering God’s call. (You
know, I’m not so sure I would have lasted too long in his shoes, or should I
say, his sandals.)
That’s part of our message, however,
for today. The calling of God is unique
to every one of us. We are still called
to prepare the way, to tell
others of Jesus’s coming, but God uses each of our gifts in the one-of-a-kind
manner in which we each have been created.
The season of Advent offers opportunity to give witness to God’s great
gift of love in the child of Bethlehem, but there is no one way to do
it.
Most likely, you won’t find me wandering the dessert
in a hairy camel hide, and even with lots of cheese on top, I don’t think I
could stomach those
locusts. The good news is, I don’t have
to. I simply need to be who God called
me to be…that will be challenging enough!
Prayer: You create us each in your image, dear God,
yet you fashion us as unique beings. Use
that uniqueness to help spread the good news and prepare the way of the
Lord. Amen.
Jim
Abernathy
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