December 9 - The Jordan River

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"In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan" - Mark 1:9 (ESV)

I was in Ephesus several years ago and while walking the stone roads that were laid many millennia earlier, I was awestruck by the realization that I was sharing a road with the Ephesians that had been so connected to the human nature of Jesus. Walking those paths and kicking up dust and dirt that may have been the same dust and dirt kicked up by Saint Paul allowed me to imagine my own footprint next to his. It was as if the very dirt that was on the ground bore witness to the events of 2000 years earlier. It helped me connect, in a very palpable way, to the incarnation.

But rivers are not like the ground. Rivers flow. When Jesus stepped off the bank into the Jordan River, he abandoned the sedentary in favor of the dynamic. The water that bore witness to the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan did not stay in place for long. It moved along the path the Jordan cut to the Dead Sea where it vaporized and rose high into the sky to form clouds that spread that water across the atmosphere until, at some point, it returned to earth as rain or snow. For 2000 years that process has repeated over and over again. To this day, the water that flowed past Jesus while he was being baptized continues to flow, to vaporize and condense. It continues to bear witness.

Chaplain John Hauser
Door County Medical Center - Sturgeon Bay


 

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