WRONG DAY

I was up even earlier than usual so that I could have some time to pray and go for a walk before I headed down to White Rock to the Celiac workshop.  Hoping to learn something new to help me cope with the mysterious and sometimes unexplainable re-action that I experience when I can eat something that makes me feel lousy.  This seems like it would be easy just to stay away from gluten but it is not.  After making the difficult decision what to wear I set off full of expectations.  Over the last while as I have done some more reading I have discovered some things that I had not realized.

So I had been looking forward to this day for several weeks and had expectations that new insights would help me especially gain more energy.  As you will have guessed it was the wrong day but fortunately I was a week ahead not a week late.  I did some shopping while I was there and then headed home.

It was also the wrong day for the world to end and that did not surprise me.  People cannot pick out certain verses in the Bible to prove what they want to believe; whether it is positive or negative.  I continue to try to discover something fresh and new and helpful as I read about the development of scripture.

There are three reasons to begin the search for the historical Jesus with John the Baptist.

Jesus' message continues the message of John and enlarges it.

All the gospels tell the story about John and Jesus but with different elements in the story.

The verifiable historical record of Jesus begins with his appearance as a disciple of the popular ascetic John.

The church has made baptism one of the first steps if one wants to follow Jesus and his teachings.  John the Baptist who denys being reborn as the Jewish prophet Elijah continues to be like him that he also is a voice of one crying in the wilderness.  A simple act of washing with water would replace the need for animal sacrifice and the need for priestly authority.  It was and is a simple act of being cleansed of one's sinfulness and then starting life free of the past and open to the spirit.