…towards the end of his life he began to have doubts about who Jesus was and whether or not there was a coming kingdom. He was in prison, after all. The old authorities were still cruelly in place. In the darkness of prison, John was suddenly not so sure about Jesus.
So, since it’s about halfway through Advent, I think it’s time for me to be less busy and a little bit more patient; to ponder a bit more and struggle a lot less, to look for God in unexpected times and places instead of either shooting up arrow prayers expecting God to take care of them and then rushing off to do something else.
When we’re standing by Jesus, there might not be room to get ahead.
There is something more, something beyond, something larger, if only we can allow our suffering souls to embrace the worst of our pain and then live on through it to the other side. There is something bigger even than death, a belonging that transcends the worst the world can dish out.
For Isaiah, it’s one thing to prophesy . . . it’s another to mess with politics.
What is it that you love about your own anonymous gift-giving? How does the legendary life of Nicholas of Myra help you see God’s goodness in yourself and in the world around you?
Is God really trying to scare and surprise us?
Like a slithering viper tucked away in a crevice, this sort of mental credentialing is dangerous precisely because we can’t see it. The crowd gathered around John in today’s reading was different in many ways, but John addressed them all equally in their need to reform their lives.
This Advent, think about the little seed of hope we all carry within us and how we can nurture that hope so that in due time we will bring forth a vision of hope that will encompass the world.
It’s not always bad news when God comes to us in the form of judges and lawyers.