Having a Plan and Purpose

I’m wondering; did Dad and Mom have a plan and a purpose for my life?  I can’t rightly say.  I know they loved me with their full being. And the care and comfort provided me was staller. But a plan or purpose? I’m not sure.  At least not in the way I view Michelle and Mitch, Amy and Jason growing Grace, Clair, Sarah, and Braydon. I’ve observed them wrapping my grandchildren in their dreams of an assurance of a plan and a purpose for their lives—albeit a purpose shrouded in hopeful mystery. Maybe it was because, growing up, I was too much a mover and shaker, with little room for contemplative thought, unwillingness to listen, too bull-headed to embrace a thought that my life was set apart.  As I delve more into leading conversations with, especially Grace and Sarah, I've noted they understand that their lives are set apart. And it doesn't appear to be strange to them, at all.

For John the Baptist, the only son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, there is much less mystery for me. From the get go John grew up knowing that he would one day be called a prophet. In fact, he grew up knowing his life’s exact call: “You will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,” Luke records. He was to be a Nazirite, literally one consecrated to God and separated from the general population.

There is very little to know about John’s life outside of his short public ministry. On the other hand, I read that he was a miracle child, just like my grandchildren, of a barren womb, grew strong in spirit and lived in the desert. He ate locusts and wild honey and wore clothing made of camel’s hair. His entire life seemed to be marked with the knowledge that he was set apart for a unique and specific role. I imagine that he thought often of the day he would meet the Messiah whose way he was to prepare. But I can’t imagine that he ever expected it would be someone from his own family, a cousin who grew up beside him.

John was baptizing in the Jordan River when the sky opened up and the Spirit descended like a dove, the sign that God had told him to expect. “The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.” The Spirit rested upon Jesus. Twice, John seems to note his astonishment; “I myself did not know him.” It is safe to assume that John knew who Jesus was; his mother, Elizabeth, was Mary’s cousin. But John did not know Jesus as the Christ, the One he had been set apart to proclaim, the one whose sandals he was not worthy to untie.

I’m struck by how often I do not see the person in front of me—the loved one, the colleague, the stranger I sell short as an imager bearer of God. John was so taken with what God revealed about Jesus that he realized he had never really known Him. This distant cousin; wasn’t He present at family gatherings and near on holidays? The cousin on occasion he had kicked a ball around with, was the Lord, the one he had been waiting for all his life. Without questioning God, without doubting Jesus, John immediately reframed his perspective and bowed before the Lamb of God. For the remainder of his days, Luke again records that John gave this testimony of Jesus: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me…  I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.” 

How quick am I adjusting my eyes to all You, Father, would have me see in the person in front of me? Yet the answer is repeated again and again in the gospels. If I am unwilling to let God transform the world before my eyes, there are going to be people I will never really know, dynamics that will I will never know because I’ve not noticed, signs I’m going to miss completely. Eureka! In the kingdom of God, astonishment should not surprise me!

Reading on here in Luke: The day after John was shown the truth about his cousin, it says, he introduced two of his disciples to the Christ. “Rabbi,” they said, “where are you staying?” “Come,” Jesus replied, “and you will see.” Like Jesus Himself, I find this exchange has both an element of the spiritual and the physical entwined. Something divine and something human. The Holy Spirit is reminding me here that there is a vertical quality about my life, a reaching to taste and see the goodness of God and to know the one in whose image I am formed. Likewise, there is also a horizontal quality about the invitation of Christ to come and see. I’m called to see the image of God in all my neighbors, to be present in a crowd that prefers escapism, to reach out to the world as if reaching to Christ Himself.

Father, God, I come this morning to answer Jesus’s invitation to come and see, learning at my age that it was indeed a multi-dimensional offer. I want to fall in love with being in Your house, meeting and greeting Your family.  But give me eyes to discover the kingdom of Christ that is not of flesh and blood. The kingdom that only You can reveal. Then help my unbelief and willingness to see. Amen