An example of faithfulness

Day 129

OT Reading: 1 Kings 19-20

NT Reading: John 2

Ever have one of those evenings that you're not feeling the greatest as the evening dwindles down, and your body just feels icky enough that you have a feeling you'll feel the same way in the morning? Yeah, that was me last night. Great all day, but as the evening went on I could tell that something was catching up with me. Perhaps my body was just giving me one big shout to slow life down for a day. But either way, I read last night then crashed...for awhile at least. I even stayed home from work to try and recover. So we'll see how well that all works out when I wake up in the morning.

As per our reading, there was one verse from yesterday's New Testament reading that really jumped out at me. To set the scene, John the Baptist is openly proclaiming that Jesus is the promised Messiah (a.k.a "the Christ"). And as he makes this declaration, John says this, "I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel." (John 1:31, NIV)

It was not that John had never met Jesus before, they were cousins in fact. But what John is saying here is that even though he did not know who the Christ was, even though he had no idea what person was coming after him, he just knew that his role was to preach, baptize and prepare the way for that Messiah. In other words, even when John did not know what was going to happen, he was still faithful to what God had called him to do.

This stands out to me because of my persistent desire to know how all the details will fall in place. I want to know how something is going to go, what is going to happen, what will be said, done, repeated, signed, etc. I like to have everything in a nice, neat system. And definitely there are times when God works that way. That's why we have the solar...system, that's why we all have circulatory...systems, God created the universe with a sense of order.

But then there are times when He wants us to be faithful...even if we don't know all the details. There are times when God calls us to continue doing right things even when we have no idea if it will matter. There are times when God calls us to keep speaking to friends, neighbors, family members and strangers about Him...never having any idea how the conversation will ultimately turn out.

And in those circumstances it would be so easy to say, "God...let me know how this will go THEN I'll do it." But instead the right approach to take is to, like John say, "God...I have no idea how this will turn out. I have no idea what you are going to do here. But I'm just going to be faithful to the task...the responsibility...the message that you have called me to."