Monday, January 5, 2015

Mark 1:6-8
 
John wore a garment of camel-skin, and he lived on locusts and wild honey. In the course of his preaching he said, 'After me is coming someone who is more powerful than me, and I am not fit to kneel down and undo the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.'

Joyous love

What is this Holy Spirit if not the presence of God’s joyous love that moves continually out of the divine heart to embrace the beloved?

The Spirit is joy and life, and where the Spirit is present human hearts become alive and beautiful, shining radiant with the joyous light of the One who is from the beginning.

On the first page of the first book of the Bible, the Spirit of God hovers over a dark watery chaos. The Spirit moves and light appears. Do we think the unimaginable power who fashioned the universe did so begrudgingly … and not from the joy of expressing what was in the divine heart?

The Holy One sprinkled star light across the endless expanse of heaven for the joy of seeing beauty and wonder spring from the endless wonder of God’s immeasurable heart. Joyous love is the Source of our lives and all that is. We are made for this.

We know and feel the joy of God’s creative love every time we know the pleasure of a job well done. Every time we create or grow or give something … and find joy in it … we experience God’s joyous love moving in us, bringing joy to our inmost being.

It is with joy that John promises One who is to come, the One who will baptize--immerse and soak us to the bone--in the joy of God so that we might pour out the joy of that Love who has neither beginning nor end.

The human heart is a leaky vessel that empties out amid the challenges of living and requires re-filling. This should not discourage anyone. For, Christ comes not once but many times through our lives. It is his joy to pour out the Love he is that our joy might be restored, new … every morning, filled with joyous light.

So we live with expectation, knowing … the One who comes will visit us with joyous love from the fullness of his heart.

Pr. David L. Miller