By Beth Bontrager, Mennonite Historical Library administrative assistant
Scripture: Luke 3:1-6 (NRSV)
I grew up on the grid. No, I mean literally on the grid. Streets went distinctly north and south, east and west. The country roads were on the mile markers, and Osage Orange windbreaks grew in straight lines. The plains stretched out broad and clear. Sunsets enhanced by distant dust were spectacular. I could see from the south end of Weaver Street all the way north to Whitestone Mennonite Church.
Then I moved to Pennsylvania.
Well, now I’m in Indiana. I live on more of a grid, but there’re just too many trees and houses to get a good view of distant sunsets.
So I really get John the Baptist’s invitation to “see the Salvation of our God” by straightening out crooked ways of thinking, removing hoops and laws to jump through to get to God and smoothing out the uneven terrain of violence, oppression, fear and uncertainty which filled the land of the Hebrews.
Which fill the lands of our present.
Can you hear the Baptist’s proclamation? Are you ready to repent of things done and not done? Are you ready to love your neighbor as yourself and your Creator? In Advent’s anticipation we are called to be actively waiting, preparing our hearts, souls, bodies and minds for the good news of God’s salvation, of being in right relationship with the One who has chosen us as beloved. If we get the clutter in our minds and lives out of the way, the path to see God’s Salvation will be clear. We can join the Baptist in preparing the way by proclaiming the coming of God’s salvation, Jesus Christ.
Scripture: Luke 3:1-6 (NRSV)
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 5Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; 6and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”