SCRIPTURE: In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’” John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. John 3:1-4
THOUGHT: Like the best of preppers, John the Baptist knew how to live off the land and he liked to live off-grid. But, unlike modern preppers, he wasn’t caught up in saving his own life. He didn’t have time for everything else because he was focused on one thing: repentance, turning, coming back to God, cleaning up, right-living. Why? Because the kingdom of heaven had come near. A holy God-With-Us had arrived. First, his parents had told him stories of the otherworldly kind, then he had seen the truth with his own eyes.
When the kingdom of heaven draws that near, in the so-called “thin places” between heaven and earth, people are changed. John was changed, Zechariah and Elizabeth were changed. And that change flowed outward and forward. John’s message of cleaning up your life because God was near drew people away from the temple and the noisy city, out into the wilderness to experience a rebirth of faith in the kind of God for which they longed, but had given up on. A living God. Present. Near. Connected. Kind. Just. Holy.
I feel like there are many, many voices crying in the wilderness today. They say “Turn around. Clean up. God is drawing near.” Are we listening? Are we being changed? Is faith being reignited in our longings to see the living God – the one who promised he would return in the same way he left?
PRAYER: God, thank you for John the Baptizer, and others like him throughout the centuries who draw us to the wilderness with what is, perhaps, inconvenient truth. It is good news that Jesus will come back, but it calls us to repentance, turning, change, rebirth, and making things ready.
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Blogger Amy Clemens is the author of Walking When You’d Rather Fly: Meditations on Faith After the Fall. In it she explores childhood sexual abuse and how it impacted her faith (or lack thereof) for four decades. You’ll find not only her story, but better yet, the Big Story of God.
Check out Walking When You’d Rather Fly, and learn more about the book and Amy’s other ministries. You will also find her devotional work at Words of Hope.
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