PrintGoing On Or Giving Up (3)
My reading this morning took me to Matt. 11 and the time John the Baptist was in prison; the prison that was shortly to become the place of his execution. I found myself thinking about the early days of his ministry. The time when he baptized Jesus. The times out in the open spaces when crowds came to hear his call to repentance. How different now. The man of the open spaces confined to a smelly dungeon.
The crowds of the open spaces and the "glory days" of preaching are just a distant memory. How different life seems when viewed through the bars of a prison cell. Can this man be the same John the Baptist who once proclaimed Jesus as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world"? Now he asks the question, "Are you the Messiah we've been expecting or should we keep looking for someone else?" (Matt. 11/3)
There are all kinds of prisons in our world and only a few of them are made of locked doors and iron bars. There are emotional prisons. There are relational prisons. If I am to be truly honest in the light of my last 2 log entries, my physical limitations feel like a prison to me at the moment. I feel so restricted in ministry activities because of the deterioration in my body. I can relate (in some ways) to how John must have felt.
But this morning there is a new thought that helps me. Jesus' reply to John's question was not to quote Scripture verses at him (although Jesus' response was scripturally sound and scripturally based), but to urge John to focus on what was happening (the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life and the Good News is being preached to the poor) rather than on what was not happening.
It all has to do with perspective. And perspective has to do with "the renewal of my mind". Suddenly I find myself thinking of another prisoner and his perspective. So different to John the Baptist. Very different from my perspective as I ponder life seen through prison bars. More on that next time.
