Perhaps you've heard about it...our crazy cold. Brrrr. It's been below zero for many days, even though the sun is beautiful upon the snow. This is the second Sunday in a row that we have missed church. Showers taken, breakfast eaten, and we look at one another and cannot brave the bitter cold out there. All the schools are closing in advance for the next week. Government offices, too. There are hardly any cars zooming past on the highway. So many cars have been stalled during this past week with people getting stranded in the cold it just might be that no one wants to struggle with the elements on Sunday. I'm assured our Lord loves us still.
We are snug in our little house and are now determined to continue supporting the few groups that house the homeless. No wonder the streets fill up in Phoenix each winter! No one should have to be outside in this bitterness.
I was reading in Luke the other day, and began to wonder about John the Baptist. What an extraordinary man! Although he was chosen by God to announce Jesus as the Messiah, he was born in a normal way. Normal, but extraordinary just the same, as his father and mother were very old, like Jerry and me, or even older. And without the help of God, there would have been no child conceived by Elizabeth and Zechariah!
Well, John was born, and went off to the desert to be raised and taught by the desert followers and teachers, all the while that Jesus was being raised in his home in Nazareth. As an adult, John began baptizing with water the many people who came to hear him preach about the coming Messiah. He was waiting for someone to appear who fitted the description he knew in his mind would be Him. When Jesus came by one day, He asked John to baptize Him. John did and watched as a dove came to sit on the shoulder of the man named Jesus, and heard a voice speak, "This is my Son in whom I am well pleased."
Did John not know? Could he not guess that he heard the Lord God speak? That what he could see was the Spirit of God nestled on the man's shoulder? That God's three-in-One had just appeared before him?
But Jesus went into the desert after His baptism and was gone for 40 days battling with Satan. Then, He began His ministry, preaching, teaching, healing and continued going to a quiet place to pray.. So for quite a while, he had no contact with John, his cousin, his friend, and his baptizer.
So then, some time after the baptism, John was put into prison due to his speaking out about the crude love affair between Herod and his brother's wife, Herodius. While John was in prison, he sent a few of his followers to go to ask Jesus, "Are you the One we have awaited for? Or should we expect another?
When Jesus heard this, He said,"Go back and tell John what you have seen and heard. The dead are raised, the blind see, the deaf can hear. and the good news is preached to the poor."
I hope and pray that John the Baptist was comforted before he was beheaded, as was done to him so horridly. I hope he wasn't disappointed that he didn't get to help Jesus more in his ministry. Perhaps, he was made to remember how the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were each present before him at the baptism of Jesus Christ when his own ministry had been completed and had been honorably done.
This story about John helps me to realize that when some thing that I have hoped for, prayed for, and expected and still does not happen, I still must have faith that in God's perfect timing, it will. Perhaps in not the way that I had imagined or even hoped, but in a way only God could have arranged.
I have seen it happen in the lives of many and even in my own. It isn't always easy to recognize, but if you look for the miracle it will be there. We must have that faith that it will be there. John the Baptist could tell you so.
Sending you all cold kisses,
Jo, writing for the love of the Lord.
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