What the One will do

Leah and have struggled all day with what the Baptizer meant. He is not the one, but the one is coming? The one who comes will baptize us not with water, but with the Holy Spirit?

Does that mean we will all be prophets? Will the Spirit of the Lord descend on all, as in the past it has descended only on a few?

Will we all be able to baptize, if we are each bathed with the Spirit? Will anybody need to be baptized or cleansed of sin?

Will there even be sin?

I still cling to a strand of hope that the One will have something to do with the Romans--maybe the Holy Spirit will empower us to get rid of them. Leah is much more excited about the idea of being baptized in the Holy Spirit--she thinks that if the Spirit is in her then our rabbis will teach her to read the Torah. I told her that was possible, but less likely than our taking over the entire Roman empire. Then she hit me.

Anyway, we hope to be home soon. It's safe to say that the trip was not exactly what either of us had expected, although we met some very interesting people along the way and we do feel like we were part of something greater. We will do our best to live out our repentences and remain cleansed of our sins.

And I wonder whether the one who is coming is not in front of us. This is a picture of the path we have to take back home.

You can see the River where John baptized us. Ahead of us the path looks awfully dark, but we'll make it through. Then there's that great rain in the sky--if we aren't drenched by the Holy Spirit, we'll at least be drenched by the time we return.

What does being baptized mean to you? What does it mean to be baptized with the Holy Spirit?

posted by Jerad @ 11:10 PM Comments: 0