By: Pastor David Grousnick

Opportunity comes with so many different faces that we often don’t recognize it. That’s probably why we sometimes miss its call. A previous generation said that opportunity comes dressed in overalls. And they were largely right, for nothing succeeds like hard work. Our generation thinks that opportunity comes with a college diploma. It may, but there’s no guarantee.

Advent season is a good time to experience divine opportunity. Any time is God’s season; but because you and I find certain settings and circumstances especially hospitable to religious experience, Advent and Lent are particularly attractive.

John the Baptizer, offered opportunity in a compelling, almost ferocious way. It seems to me that good news must sometimes come dressed in rough clothing.

William Willimon, Chaplain at Duke University, says that John the Baptist reminds us of boundaries we must respect and gates we must pass through.

At Duke, Willimon reminds the students, “If you are going to graduate, you must first get past the English Department. If you are going to practice law, you must pass the bar. If you want to get to medical school, you must survive Organic Chemistry.”

Likewise, “If you want to get to the joy of Bethlehem in the presence of Jesus, you must get past John the Baptist in the desert.” The word from John is “repent,” which means “about-face” or turning 180 degrees.

In John Steinbeck’s story “The Wayward Bus” a dilapidated old bus takes a cross country shortcut on its journey to Los Angeles and gets stuck in the mud. While the drivers go for assistance, the passengers take refuge in a cave.

It is a curious company of people, and it is obvious that the author is attempting to get across the point that these people are lost spiritually as well as literally. As they enter into this cave, the author calls the reader’s attention to the fact that as they enter, they must pass a word that has been scrawled with paint over the entrance. The word is repent.

Although Steinbeck calls that to the reader’s attention it is interesting that none of the passengers pay any attention to it whatsoever.

All too often this is our story. Repentance is not just changing our minds, or feeling sorry for something that we have done, or even making bold resolves that we will never participate in certain conduct again. Instead, repentance means to turn around and go in another direction.

What John the Baptist wanted his audience to hear was: Turn your life toward this one called Messiah. This is not negative or down-faced. Rather, it breaks the chains of whatever holds us back in life.

The famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright created an idea called organic architecture. He believed that buildings should be blended into the surrounding natural environment.

If you stare at the buildings that he designed on the campus of Florida Southern College in Lakeland, it is very difficult to tell where the edifice stops and the environment begins. It merges and blends.

Perhaps we should start talking of organic Christianity. If you look at the life of Jesus, you see no sharp line between his religious life and his everyday life. They blended and they meshed together. It should be that way for you and for me.

If we have responded to John’s demands that we repent, if Christ really has been born anew in our hearts, then it will bring out the best, not the worst, in us. It brought out the best in Joseph.

When Mary told her husband that she was pregnant, he had every legal right to divorce her for in those days an engagement was the equivalent of a marriage. Not one man in a million could have been expected to believe Mary’s version of the conception.

But Joseph believed it. Christmas brought out the good in Joseph.

It is my prayer that this Christmas season will have an effect on the way that you live your life. That it will bring out the best, not the worst, in you. None of us have the problems that Joseph had that first Christmas, yet the best was brought out in him.

When you and I care, we want to give our best to God. To be the best is to be like Jesus. And to be like Jesus is to have him reborn in our lives.

Have a great weekend!

David Grousnick, is the Pastor at the First Christian Church in Artesia