Something New!

 "I baptize you with water," said John the Baptist, "but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire!"  

We read or hear this at least once a year if we attend church, and we go on about our business as if nothing remarkable has been said.  Truly our ears must be stopped up if we do not hear, or if we do not think, that there is something remarkable here.

We know Jesus has come; we know He did miracles while on earth; we know He died and emerged from the tomb, having conquered death once and for all.  So, for most people, He is now a historical figure like other historical figures we have read about.  Except that unlike them, He still lives and continues His ministry on earth --- but now through his "partners," his disciples, who are gradually becoming like Him through the action of the Holy Spirit in them.

I wonder how many millions of people go to church all their lives without asking to "be baptized" by Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  It seems to me that if we have a desire to be in church, we must have a desire to have a relationship with God.  That relationship, however, seems barely possible and remote from the reality of our lives.

Throughout the Bible, fire has represented an epiphany, a manifestation of the divine presence.  It would be interesting to study just that -- the places where fire has appeared in the Old and New Testaments, and the effect it had on those present.  God appeared in fire to make a covenant with Abraham; He came in the burning bush to commission Moses to set the Israelites free from slavery; He led the people through the wilderness via a pillar of fire by night and cloud by day.  Psalm 97 says, "Fire goes before Him and consumes his foes roundabout."  And of course, we are all familiar with the fire of Pentecost, when the disciples were "baptized with the Holy Spirit and with [the] fire" that shook them to their souls and sent them forth on the mission they had been given.

If we desire at all a relationship with God, we must also desire the fire of the Holy Spirit that makes that relationship possible.  If Jesus is alive today (He is), and if His greatest desire is to cast fire upon the earth (Luke 12:49), then shouldn't we be asking night and day to be "baptized" with that fire?  

In the Greek, the word "baptize" means to "dye." When cloth is dyed, it no longer resembles its former state; it has become something new.  We are all conscious of what we "are now."  What we don't know is what we will become when we are baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  But imagine the adventure of finding out!  I think we can trust Jesus not to harm us with that baptism, but only to renew and make us more like He is -- able to communicate with and to relate to the Divine presence in our lives.