Devotions Archive Archive: 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 Search Archive Print This Article Living in the wilderness Wednesday, January 2, 2002 John 1:20-23 John did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, "I am not the Christ." They asked him, "Then who are you? Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not." "Are you the Prophet?" He answered, "No." Finally they said, "Who are you? ... What do you say about yourself?" John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, "I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way for the Lord.'" On the ninth day of Christmas, this sounds more like an Advent text to me. And it really is, in a way. Jesus disappeared from public view for thirty years. John's boyhood friend was just a boy like him, soon to reappear with the heavenly dove above his head, soon to take the world of Galilee by storm. But for now, John is just listening as best he can to what God tells him to be doing. So he awakens the people around him to their need for a savior. By living the way he does, dressed in hides and eating only what he finds in the desert, he shows the world for the wilderness it truly is without God. John baptizes with water, calling it incomplete, and his listeners hunger for more. The Messiah is coming in glory and light, and he will purify their lives like nothing on earth can. The whitest snow in the wilderness is black in the presence of the Messiah's radiance. John did not settle for the moral standards of the world around him; he did not allow himself to get comfortable. He waited for Jesus to show him the way into the Kingdom of God. And he insists that I do the same. This is difficult, Lord. I see beauty all around me, but it is only a shadow. I think I know what is right, but I see less clearly than you want me to see. In the desert, waiting every day for Jesus, purify my heart. "; Add      Edit    Delete