Thoughts Have Hands

John the Baptist preached repentance in the face of a coming revelation, of the presence of Emmanuel (God with Us). Soon he proclaimed we will be under the reign of God. He was preaching to the people of Israel (the people who struggle with God), when he warned of the coming kingdom.  Make yourself ready, purify yourself through repentance (amendment of life) for the Kingdom is near. Such statements envision something fantastic around the corner. A power such that even he is unfit to untie the shoes of the One to come. His words demand humility from his hearers.  His call to repent and be baptized is the only act they could perform to prepare for this something, this holy other breaking into the world.

Such expectations are foreign to most of us. We may long for divine intervention.  We may hope for God to save us or let us win the lottery.  But these wish prayers don’t take us to a new vision of creation.  We remain under the same authority and world order that comes with each new day. We live in a world that demands our time and attention.  

…and blunt the prospect of even considering the advent of such astounding power.  We are enamored by texting, not scriptural texts. We hear such proclamations with a knowing smile that says, that’s nice, but it is a seasonal story, not much more. We read it over and over, year after year. 

Besides who lives this way? I’m not interested in ranting in the desert or downtown for that matter about what is coming. Most of us live in little bubbles with carefully outlined expectations. These settings are chosen, planned, or at least accepted as reasonable approximations of the good life. We know about planning our days, running errands, and shopping; longer term we engage in estate and tax planning.  Many are quite proud of the careful plans we have made, and all the precautions we have taken to ensure stable futures for ourselves and our families.  All this careful planning for our futures is understandable, but can you hear that wild man screaming at us?  He is standing by the river, half naked, like a homeless veteran back from some foreign war, beseeching us to look up from our computers, asking us if we are ready for what is to come.  It will flow into our lives around the next bend in the river.  It may rush in on us like rapids or hang like a watery precipice that we do not see until to late.  The river carries us without pity or mercy along its course. It is the inexorable passage of our lives from womb to tomb that cruises along while we gaze happily at the scenery until the crash slips up on us from around the bend. 

Dimly, hidden behind the careful constructs of straw, wood, and brick, depending on your circumstance, lies a hidden reality; one that John eagerly waves before our sleepy eyes, trying to wake us up. It is a reality which we may hope for at some level, but also one many of us fear to face.  The scenery of our daily lives is so much more relevant.  We deny the possibility of encountering the eternal in our lives.

We fears this uncertain possibility because we have paid scant attention to it. We may have just poo pooed the whole idea that anything dramatic will ever come into our world. So we focus on scrapping together money for Christmas gifts after necessities are covered.  Or we take on more debt to make sure family and friends receive something in their stockings. It is all about immediate needs being managed respectably. 

Today we are busier than ever.  All we do is in the context of iPhones, iPads, and laptops that expand our horizons globally, but we leave us cloaked in our pedestrian settings. We worry about housing, food preparation and clean clothes and schooling for the kids, not the immanent raid of the infinite on the immediate life we inhabit day in and day out. Usually we pay lip service to the possible impact of God walking in our garden door.  It’s, oh yeah, that could happen or will happen –someday.  As for now, I have to fix dinner for the kids and write the rent check for the landlord.  I will worry about the infinite tomorrow.

So what are we to make of this wild man in strange clothes, living off the land telling us to repent and change our ways. Does he expect me to live like him? Well may be but more likely he is calling our attention to the world we inhabit hear and now. He is asking us to consider our lives in a larger context, than the immediate pedestrian concerns of food and housing. He is screaming at us and demanding we stop, turnaround, and look at what is on the horizon. He is proclaiming that our expectations are to low. He demands we look at our lives and our world, our justice and peace, in the context of heaven, the eternal, or the infinite.  He is pointing at us like the fool on the hill, laughing at all we fail to see, at all we fail to make room for in the daily happening of our lives. He is asking for a moment of contemplation to think again about who we are, about what we are doing, and asking us to breathe in the infinite grace that supports, sustains and constantly blesses our lives. This grace happens quietly most of the time, behind the curtain if you will. John is telling us prepare, for no one knows when the curtain will be drawn, and reveal the infinite reality of God with us. The time is at hand. Look up, look around, rejoice grace like honey is everywhere. 

John wants us to live with a constant thank you on our lips. No matter the conditions under which we live we are blessed.  The survival which we struggle so mightily to maintain against all odds is 

We struggle to survive.  We struggle with God.  Their is irony in the mutual exploration of both.  The struggle is complimentary. We must survive to struggle with God. The struggle to survive requires hard work in the finite world to maintain resources for living.