It's always been a little interesting to me that John the Baptist questioned who Jesus was after he had actually baptized him. Yet here we are this morning, reading in Matthew how the Baptist sent his people to Jesus to see what was going on. The notes in my Jerusalem Bible say that perhaps John was questioning Jesus because Jesus was not the kind of Messiah John expected.
How often does God not live up to our perceptions of who we think he ought to be?
How often have we discarded those perceptions, sometimes painfully, only to get still yet another glimpse of who God actually Is?
Each day, we are called to further conversion, further surrender of self. The hope we have is not that God fits into what we think he should be but that we turn out to be what he had in mind when he created us.
I've wondered the same thing. Perhaps John thought that if Jesus really were the Messiah, he wouldn't be in prison. You are so right, we put God in our self-created boxes and he is too big for any box. We must be content to live in the mystery, to find peace in that. And yes, surrender, 'I must decrease.....'
ReplyDeleteAndie