She’s back!! This post by Randa Chance showed up in my #timehop today and I thought it was worth sharing again. You would love her other posts,  “When The Music Stops”, and “Tears”.   This one is out of the ballpark! Please share it. 

Poor John the Baptist.

As a fellow flawed human, if I were in his shoes (or sandals), I probably would have done the same thing. Think about it.

All of your life, you have prepared the way of the Lord, who also just happens to be your relative. Everywhere you go, you bawl out the coming of the One whose shoelaces you are unworthy to loose.

You are a free spirit. 

You live in the desert, you wear smelly animal skins, and your locust-induced halitosis keeps people out of breathing range. People come to see and hear you speak about the mystery of God, but to many you are simply a circus freak. To King Herod, you present a fascinating problem. He knows you are a man of God, and he knows you speak the truth, but you also pose a threat to him. So, he throws you in prison where he can keep an eye on you.

It’s a far cry from being able to run free around the desert and feel the wind blowing through your beard. You wish you could just stand on a mountainside once more and survey the landscape while you pick your teeth with a locust leg. Instead, you sit incarcerated with hordes of rats in a damp, stinky hole, unable to do anything but languish and scratch your lice and send dejected messages to Jesus via your disciples.

Then there is your cousin, the rock star. The one you’ve been telling everyone about. The Messiah who waves His hand and causes bread crumbs and slivers of fish to fill thousands of hungry bellies. The One with the twelve groupies. Jesus, the Son of God, healing little old women with a flick of His robe, forgiving sins and spitting into blind eyeballs.

And the crowd goes wild.

I wonder if John was waiting for Jesus to come and break him out of prison or perhaps set up a series of preaching points with the two of them, complete with laser lights and smoke and, “Hallelujah! That man just jumped out of his wheelchair and is running around the building! Another miracle for our ministry team!” Jesus and John – The Dynamic Duo.

But it never happened, and John was disheartened, to put it mildly. When he sent two of his disciples to get Jesus’ attention, his short and to-the-point message – even by KJV standards – was certainly laced with something other than pure curiosity:

“So the men came to Jesus and said, John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, Are you the One who is to come, or shall we [continue to] look for another?” (Luke 7:17 – AMP)

Oh, he knew Jesus was The One. John knew all along. He was just sending Jesus a not-so-subtle reminder that the voice crying in the wilderness was now rotting in jail, and, oh hey, by the way, this is NOT how things were supposed to turn out. Aren’t you supposed to get some kind of perks when you know the right people? Especially when you’re related?

“Yo, cuz. Help a brotha out. No, seriously. My head is about to be chopped off. What about all the times I prepared the way for you? I even baptized you. And now I’m in jail and it looks like I’m not long for this world. Not cool. Not cool at all. Thanks a lot, man.”

Jesus, in his infinite wisdom, after telling John’s disciples to relay to him all of the miracles being performed, cut straight through all of the fluff. In Luke 7:23 he responded directly to the heart of John’s question:

“Blessed (happy–with life-joy and satisfaction in God’s favor and salvation, apart from outward conditions–and to be envied) is he who takes no offense in Me and who is not hurt or resentful or annoyed or repelled or made to stumble [whatever may occur].”

John, I can see you. I know you’re having a rough time. Don’t be offended. I have a greater purpose that you may not understand this side of eternity. I know that you had a different set of plans for your life. I understand your unasked questions. This is an unexpected outcome for you, and you have the option to be completely bitter. It’s your call, whatever you decide. But I want you to trust my plan.

I have felt John’s frustrations before in my own life.

Sadly, I have allowed myself in several situations to become offended at God when my own expectations or projected outcomes differed from the path that God had laid out.   I doubt that anyone has never prayed, “Please allow cancer to invade my body.  Gracious Heavenly Father, let me die while my children are still young — perhaps in a fiery auto accident.   And, oh, while you’re at it, please also see to it that my finances are devastated and that my marriage falls apart.”

I am so thankful that God is a patient and loving Father, because my questions to Him have been sarcastic at times. Really, God? Are you serious? Is this your idea of a joke? It has been a painful road to walk.

For me, the blessing came one day when I was finally able to pry open my hands that clutched deep desires and hold them up to God and say, “Okay, God. Here are my dreams. Here are my aspirations. They don’t really belong to me anyway. Here are the broken parts of me. Here are my frustrations and secret sorrows. Sure, I wanted to be a psychologist/world-renowned author/gifted musician/(fill in the blank with preferred dream).

But if you need me to be a toilet scrubber right now, I will make those commodes shine. If my place in life during this season – or for the rest of my life – is to be someone’s burden bearer, without any credit ever going to me, that’s okay too. It hurts right now. I can’t deny that.

But I will be fine. Help me to be content while you mold me. As impatient as I am, still I know that your will and your timing and your plans for me are far greater than anything I could ever imagine. Just give me grace to trust you… Help me to trust you.”

And then there came the overshadowing of deep peace and quiet assurance that I was exactly where He wanted me, that this was His gig to worry about — not mine — and that gave me the strength to keep going.

All is well. It is well with my soul.

Randa Chance is a writer, speaker and pastor’s wife at the Sanctuary of San Antonio. She lives in San Antonio, TX with her husband, Shane, and their children. You can purchase her wonderful book, Of Cabbages and Kings here, It is as delightful as and charming as Randa herself. I adore her.