Week 2: Day 6

Scripture: Luke 1:57-79

Augustine says that the birth of John the Baptist is the boundary between the Old Testament and the New Testament. A picture of the old and the new, literally born to elderly parents, barren and longing, mute and doubting. And in a few short verses, a mother and a righteous follower and a new life coming to prepare the way for what is to come. The barrier between the prophets and the law and the Savior who would fulfill it all.

John calls himself, "the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness." His job as the barrier is to belt one cry to all who would listen: He is coming. The king is coming. Prepare the way for him. What John the Baptist offers Israel, many have offered us. Voices crying out to us, calling us toward the Word who was and is the always. The saints who stand as barriers between the before and the after. In my life there have been so many voices calling to me, stuck in the darkness of a wild and barren land. Voices daring me toward the Holy.

In this season the voices continue to cry. The king is coming. Prepare the way. It is not too late. It is not too late to prepare the way for Christmas to come, in our homes and in our hearts. It is not too late to see, for the first time or the thousandth, the ways we have neglected his coming in our lives. It is not too late to find the One who changes everything in the midst of the things we think are important. It is not too late to let the words of Zechariah, proclaiming the voice of his Son, to seep into our busy minds and wandering hearts:

"...because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."

-Luke 1:78-79

Prayer:

No human mind could ever conceive or invent the gospel. Acting in eternal grace, you are both its messenger and its message, lived out on earth through infinite compassion, applying your life to insult, injury, death, that I might be redeemed, ransomed, freed. Help me to give up every darling lust, to submit heart and life to its command, to have it in my will, controlling my affections, molding my understanding...Take me to the cross to seek glory from its infamy; strip me of every pleasing pretense of righteousness by doing my own things. O gracious Redeemer, I have neglected thee too long. Amen.

-from Valley of Vision