Scripture verses that caught my attention today: Matthew 3:11-12 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Observation: John the Baptist was looking forward, it would seem, to the coming of the “more powerful” one who would clean up this mess of civilization.
Application: Wouldn’t we all like someone to come in and clean things up! All evil-do-oers? Poof. All people who have wronged us in any way and not repented? Poof. We might hope that such people might be afraid, be very afraid.
Not so fast. Some of the necessary “cleaning up” is closer to home. Much closer. Truth be told, all of us need Christ’s Holy Spirit and fire. We need to be sifted by the winnowing fork, cleared from the threshing floor (where everything is all jumbled together) and the good and bad from within separated, one from the other.
Yes, we are each a mixture of wheat and chaff. The wheat in us meant to be gathered and entrusted to God’s safe-keeping. The chaff serves as fuel for the fire itself.
Okay, but don’t some of us have more “wheat” than others? Or more “chaff?”
It’s hard to say because we can only see others in part. Furthermore, due to our own blindness, we can only see ourselves in part as well. We have the propensity, at times, to overlook our own chaff. Sometimes the opposite is true as well…we fail to see the kernels of fine grain within.
This is why we do not carry the winnowing fork in the first place. This is why we are the recipients, rather than the senders, of the Holy Spirit and fire. Through Christ we can indeed look ahead and forward to the “clearing.”
Prayer: Lord, winnow us as you will. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
(Readings today included: 1 Samuel 18, ! Chronicles 6, Psalm 11, and Matthew 3)
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