A Voice

 

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK

A VOICE

Mark 1:1-5

1:1 The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.   2 It is written in Isaiah the prophet:

"I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way"— 3 "a voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'"   

4 And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

NIV

And so came John. Mark does not spend any time regarding the birth of Jesus, nor about that time when he was about twelve when his parents had to come back to find him in the temple. Mark does not give us any record of the time when Jesus’s mother Mary visits her cousin, the mother of John who becomes the Baptist, and John, still in the womb leaps and his mother makes that great prophecy regarding Mary, the mother of the Christ. No, Mark starts off right out of the gate with, and so John came. He does give us the words of Isaiah who prophesied about John being the messenger, and that would prepare the way for Jesus. John was simply a voice in the desert, proclaiming to the people they should repent and make ready for the Lord. That is what John was all about, making people ready for the Messiah. There is something special about John the Baptist, as when his mother heard the voice of Mary, we are told Elizabeth was filled with the Spirit. The Spirit had to have some effect on John even while he was still in the womb. He certainly was a man filled with the Spirit, speaking the words of God to the people. Proclaiming words about Jesus. That is also our calling. We are called to tell people about Jesus, but we cannot do it without the Spirit. Yes, we have been called to be a witness and we always say that all we can really tell is our story, what we have seen and heard or witnessed. But we have seen and heard Jesus, as we are in Christ and He is in us. We and Jesus are one, as He and the Father are one. So we can tell people about who we are one with, Jesus. We know all there is to know in order to proclaim him to the world we live in, the place we work, the place we live, our neighborhood, the place we play, and even the place we worship. We have to remember there will be people who attend church, who either do not have the Spirit or have become one with Jesus yet. So we should take our cue from John and simple by one voice in the wilderness of this world, a desert, void of the fruit of the Spirit, of bearing any fruit at all, but barren, like that fig tree that had no figs, and was then found to have withered. That is the world, it is withering without Jesus, fruitless, and without figs. So, we have but one voice, just a voice, and we should use our voice to give praise and honor to Jesus in worship and to proclaim him to this withering world before it perishes. Let us be that voice.