John the Baptist: A Meditation

John The Baptist: A Meditation

John the Baptist witnessed how immersion in a current of streaming forgiveness washed away dark clods of death caked on the soul of a repenting sinner, witnessed how the upsurge of abiding love broke through dams of hatred and guilt, flooding heart and spirit with the lotion of new life, a life saturated with wonder, a wonder awe-eyed at the clean hope of a transformed life that–now–both reveled in the splashing freedom of grace and floated quietly on the buoyant depth of mercy.

Yes, the Baptist witnessed people repent when the water and the voice of God met them in their confessing of sins. And he felt their rigid pride go limp as they yielded to the enveloping water, his supporting hands their only safety through the gliding cold to the breathless bottom of the river, where sins die for lack of air, and where sinners–now–renewed with inspiration are poised to leap up, toward the bubbles of airborne life waiting to welcome them as they burst open the entombing surface of the water.

Yes, the Baptist raised them upward, through the–now–releasing water, witnessing them rise, beyond their liquid graves–now–gulping breath-filled freedom, their faces awash with newborn gratitude, their humbled palms uplifted in thanksgiving toward heaven, their lungs–now–billowing with the beauty of enlivening breath.

Yes, the baptist beheld them as they walked from the river, their skins beading with water, droplets evaporating with each step forward, until that moment when all the water was absorbed into the embracing air. Now they were sanctified: God had bathed them with His own forgiving water and with the obeying hands of the Baptist.

Yes, the Baptist believed that God had made repenting sinners clean, and the Baptist’s faith continued to sustain him as he lived out his calling as a voice crying in the wilderness, crying for sinners to repent, even though he knew his ministry must decrease, and Jesus’ ministry must increase, and even though he knew that the Living Water was coming–even knowing all that, he experienced–now–one fact that confirmed who he was as a man of God and what he was prophesied to do for God, a fact he felt come alive in the redeeming touch of water every time its cleansing power flowed over his outstretched hands–the Yes God pronounced over his life, the Yes his faith declared: “I baptize in water.”