URC Daily Devotion 28th September

The first is the importance of knowing ourselves, particularly in relation to God. When I think of myself, it’s usually in relation to other people, for instance, how much worse (or very occasionally!) better I am than them. We live in a competitive society and it rubs off on us all. But at the start of this passage, a group of very important religious people come to ask John who he is in relation to the holy people they want him to be like. I don’t know about you, but if someone important whom I respected told me I was like a very holy person, I’d just agree with them and be incredibly proud. John doesn’t do this. He rejects all their ideas and plans for him, and tells them exactly who God says he is, and then what God has given him to do. Sometimes in the middle of all the good and bad advice which comes our way, all we have to do is stay true to God’s vision for us, no matter how much other people disagree with it.

The second lesson of this passage is the importance of approaching other people in the same way. Just as we are only truly ourselves in God, so too are other people. John and Jesus are related, no matter how distantly, as their mothers are kinsfolk. We all have a view of our relatives that probably hasn’t changed much since we were teenagers, or younger! However, people we know well or are related to do change, sometimes very significantly, as God has His gracious way with them. Here John doesn’t see a relative, with all the assumptions and limits that come with that; instead he sees a man through whom God is about to do a great and miraculous work. He doesn’t just see Jesus. He sees Christ. In the same way, we should respond to those we know well through the light of what God is doing with and in them now, and not in the light of what we know about them from the past.