John the baptizer’s sudden appearance comes at a time in history when people had been back in the promised land and waiting for the Jewish Messiah to finally arrive.
The New Testament scriptures were written to people whose entire worldview was saturated with the Hebrew scriptures.
After being asked “who is my neighbor?”, Jesus tells a story that flips the question around and makes us ask “how can I be a neighbor?”
We see suffering and instead of being moved to action by compassion for those who are in the middle of it, we are provoked on an intellectual level – like it is some kind of equation to be solved or a theory to be proved.
Could it be that the lack of information about Jesus’ early life is actually a lesson in itself – another example to imitate?
We will not just spend eternity with God in his new creation, but we will also be adopted into the family of God as sons and daughters of God himself.
This is a fitting way to start off the season of Advent as we prepare for Christmas and what it calls us to remember. After all, the people of God spent hundreds of years hoping and waiting for their Messiah.
Will we take up the call of Christ to love our enemies or will we, like Jonah, refuse to listen and be destroyed and consumed by our own hatred?
Can a Christian lose their salvation? For many this simple question seems to have an obvious answer.