The year was 1972. My brother lived in a remote area of southeastern Oklahoma and I had gone to visit him. We were in a jeep with a guide deep in a forested area when we ran across a clearing of about half an acre. In the clearing was a tiny shack with a tin roof. A dog barked and a man who looked to be Native American stepped out of the shack carrying an old shotgun. Our guide waved to the man and after a brief pause, the man waved back and gestured for us to come closer. During our brief conversation, I noticed a dead wild turkey hanging on the side of the shack. I foolishly remarked to the man who lived in the shack that I did not know it was “turkey season.” Fixing me with a cold eye he said, “Out here, it’s whatever season I say it is.”
The Attraction of Isolation
Undoubtedly, millions of people have fantasized about “getting away from it all.” Few actually do so. The rest of us have to content ourselves with the occasional moment of solitude. The truth is that we enjoy our busyness and we understand the difficulties involved in withdrawing from civilization. Isolation’s attraction only goes so far. To give up our medicines, transportation, entertainment, communication, human contact, choice foods, and creature comforts would be extremely difficult to say the least. Yet this is precisely what John the Baptist did.
Strength from Commitment
Powerful preaching must be coupled with a powerful commitment that resists the lure of the world. John the Baptist’s humble commitment to his second cousin, Jesus, resulted in the masses coming to John to hear him preach and to receive baptism from John.
I competed in kickboxing, power-lifting, and Olympic weight lifting for more than 40 years. I noticed a correlation between hard training during which I had to separate myself from ordinary life and the growth of skill and strength. John the Baptist was a powerful, effective ambassador and “way maker” for the Messiah because he had separated himself from the mundane and allowed himself to be exercised by hardship. Maybe, in our age of comfort and softness, there is something to be learned from voluntary privation that results in greater spiritual strength and effective-ness. |L
Dale Holzbauer is a minister, adjunct professor, and a church consultant in Xenia, Ohio. He and his wife Beth have three children and six grandchildren.
