The Thongs of Whose Sandals...

And this was [John's] message: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie."
Mark 1:7

I love it when God takes seemingly unrelated events and/or things I read, and puts them together to show me His truth. Last week I was perusing a couple of blogs concerning the Borden/Ludwig murder case in Pennsylvania. Three blogs in particular and their subsequent comments were quite insightful: Choosing Home, The Common Room, and Spunky Homeschool.

In the middle of a swirl of thoughts concerning the Pennsylvania teens, I read from Mark 1:7, "...the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie." I was shocked. I was humbled. I was convicted.

I was struck by how John's humility was an important message to those of us who have the blessing of parenting. Here was John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus, the messenger, the "voice of one calling in the wilderness," the one who would baptize our Lord. John, whom God created "to prepare the way for the Lord," stating that he was unworthy to untie Jesus's sandals! The dusty roads of John's time would certainly make for quite dirty feet; but compound this with the fact that the duty of untying sandals was usually performed by non-Jewish slaves.

The discussion of the Pennsylvania case has been very clear about the importance of knowing your children's hearts and the false sense of security that things such as having a church-going family, Christian parents, home schooling, etc. can possibly bring. John the Baptist is certainly physically capable of removing Jesus's sandals, but he intimates he is unworthy to perform the duty of a non-Jewish slave. If he felt this way, how can we ever take our parenting responsibilities lightly? We are accountable for the eternal souls of the little ones we bring into our families! If John does not feel fit to undo the strap of Jesus's sandals, should we not then be continually on our knees regarding our children?!?

Today in My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers commented on Luke 18:1, "They should always pray and not give up." He wrote, "You cannot intercede if you do not believe in the reality of the Redemption; you will turn intercession into futile sympathy with human beings which will only increase their submissive content to being out of touch with God...Our work lies in coming into definite contact with God about everything, and we shirk it by becoming active workers. We do the things that can be tabulated but we will not intercede."

God, forgive us our complacency and spur us "further up and further in" towards more Godly parenting of, and prayer for, the precious ones You have placed in our care!