The spirit had come to John and said, "All right, John. You've being prepared. You've done your apprenticeship. We'll send you out." And he goes out. And he speaks to the people. And he baptized the people. He talks to them about repentance, which is what?
To turn back to God. In what area of your life do you need to turn back to God? We all do. Maybe we just sort of turned our back a little bit on him. Maybe we walked away completely in some area of our lives. We have not been to Mass in awhile. Or, we continue to complain that the church is not perfect with all its imperfections.
But this is an invitation for you to turn back to God. And then, John has another very unpopular phrase and idea in that relativistic culture. And that is, the forgiveness of sins.
What is sin? The actual definition is to miss the mark. It's like the archer that misses the mark. We miss the mark all the time, right? We miss the mark every day in dozens of ways. What is it? It’s not having the patience to put up with a little annoyance of life. Holding a fussy kitty while my partner inserts pills to help them cope with their irritable bowel disease. Or, you may have to take your pre-school child to get tested for Covid for the fifth time this month because they were sent home from school with a cough. it's to be less than who you are. In one way, it's to abandon your deepest, truest best version of yourself.
That is to miss the mark. And we all do it every day, and you don't need me to give you a list of things. You could ask your partner for this list, but I assume you have a good idea what you need to work on. These are all the ways you can miss the mark, because you know them. You know them when you see them, you know them when you're participating in them, you don't need me to tell you, and I don't need you to tell me because I know them.
What we do need is what John had. And it's that humility and submissiveness to the spirit of God. It's to allow the spirit of God to lead us. But in order to do that, we have to be aware of God's presence. We have to be aware of the spirit moving in our lives. We have to learn to listen to the spirit in our lives, which takes time. And like anything else, we get best at it, if we do it, if we practice it every single day with unerring and relentless consistency so that the spirit can lead us wherever the spirit wants to lead us.
Because, what you really want deep down inside will only come from following the path, the call, the spirit, the destiny that God has created you for.
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends that we take a moment to humbly listen to your spirit that simply wants us to be the best version of ourself.
