“Go And Prepare The Way For The Lord!”

“Go And Prepare The Way For The Lord!”
Today is a special date in my life. And the coincidence of the text selection by my church and the story of my life is just too good not to be an illustration for today’s meditation. After two years of service as an assistant pastor I was ordained among other colleagues into the ministry of the Word and Sacrament on the 14th December 1994 at Ntamulung by the Very Rev Henry Anye Awasum of blessed memory and assisted by the Synod Clerk Rev. Nyansako-ni-Nku and Rev Richard Pefok. And today the story is about the birth of John the Baptist (Lk.1:5-17).
I just know that my father’s pain was not less than that of Zechariah the father of John the Baptist. My father may not have been from a priestly family like Zechariah, but he knew what it meant not to have a male child at old age in a society where the continuity of family lineage through sons was a religious obligation.
My oldman worked in the plantations, retired and came home in the fifties before giving birth to me as an only son, being the fourth in a line of five children. How painful for a typical Bali man! He must have spent sleepless nights sometimes begging God for a son, at other times asking, ‘God why me?’ And yet at other times blaming God for not giving him a son. But as it is, “God’s time is the best!”
The joy of it is that both stories have happy endings! To each story a son was born at last and to each story the son was born with an assignment to “go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous – to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
I know John the Baptist fulfilled his mission, but as for me only God knows whether I have succeeded or failed, or I am yet to be evaluated since I am still executing my assignment. All I can say is, *”Dear Lord, even if I was not “filled with the Holy Spirit from birth” like John the Baptist, at least let the Holy Spirit accompany me, to erase my excesses and use me “to prepare a people for the Lord.”
*My friend, it is not my story alone; it is our story! “No man is an island…” May be you are that father whose heart should be turned towards his children or that disobedient person whose heart has to be turned “to the wisdom of the righteous.”So it is your story as well.
The story of all of us is *”to make ready a people prepared for the Lord,” not in the manner of improving the roads before the visit of a king, but for a moral and spiritual preparation of the hearts of people to receive Jesus Christ; that is, *”preaching a baotism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”*(Lk.3:3).
Prayer of the week: Holy Spirit maintain me in the grace of God to heed the message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Amen!
Welcome back to a new working week and have a blessed day and week! Peace be with you!