John 2-3

I love hiking. There is something so right about being in the woods, isolated from all things complicated. I embrace it…I love losing myself to nature…instead of watching the hours and minutes creep by on an office clock, I watch the sun move across the sky with such conviction. I trade in a previously-timed breakfast, lunch, and dinner for intermittent snacking on trail mix and beef jerky—the timing determined only by my stomach’s desires. My favorite amenity to relinquish, though, is the daily shower. I know there are some readers who just decided I’m a sicko…but I’m hoping there are others of you who will testify to the freedom of not showering. It’s the same wonderful feeling you get as a child when you jump with all your might off of a curb into a puddle and watch as the murky, brown water covers your pants and sometimes face. You don’t know about laundry or stains, or money for that matter, and so you live a little more freely. That is the gift of lightness. Not showering gives me that gift, wrapped loosely with no bows.

I would have been John the Baptist’s number one fan. I would have started a club and we would’ve followed J.B. like groupies. We would’ve worn matching camel’s hair clothes and we would’ve roasted locusts over the camp fire and then drizzled them with wild honey [Matthew 3]. It sounds like the perfect dose of lightness. J.B. wasn’t Captain Cool and he wasn’t on anybody’s plan [except God’s]. He was the poster child for self-expression…he knew about non-conformity long before gothic teenagers. I love that the Lord chose to send John the Baptist, an unkempt, less-than-impressive mountain man, to prepare the way for His son—the savior.

I guess if you’ve spent even a little bit of time reading the gospels you already know that God doesn’t care about appearance…and while I think God intentionally selected John the Baptist’s attire as he walked through the woods exclaiming his position as the “one who comes before the Christ,” I think it was J.B.’s heart that God was really putting on display.

How was John the Baptist so grounded? He was ordained to be the guy that paves the way for the Messiah and yet he was so quick to declare his own unimportance. His followers came to him expressing concern about the nerve of Jesus to start a baptism contest across the Jordan river and John the Baptist served them up a warm slice of humble pie, “A man can receive only what is given him from heaven.” He was so sure of His role in the big picture because he recognized that the only reason he had a role at all was because of God’s grace and sovereignty. I treasure humility like that of John the Baptist…it is so refreshing. He continues to explain to his disciples that, “The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less.”

And we must take a lesson from John the Baptist.


Jenna Trapasso
March 19