Everything is preparation.
But for what?
Everything is preparation for the future. Everything is seemingly meaningless if there isn’t a future hope you are keeping your eyes on. A future hope helps put the past – the pains, the failures, the disappointments – in perspective.
But even a future hope is kind of vague. For Christians, that future has a name, the future is grounded in a person, that future is becoming present through the presence and work of Christ Jesus.
So for Christians, we can believe that everything that happens to us now is preparation for the future – maybe for tomorrow, maybe for next year, maybe for something Christ is working on in three decades that he needs us to do.
We get this kind of perspective in the opening lines of the Gospel According to Mark:
The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the Prophet:
“I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way” –
” …a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'”
John the Baptist was born before Jesus in order to be the messenger who went ahead of his cousin to announce the good news of his arrival as the anointed deliverer of Israel and their long awaited King. John is the one appointed to prepare the way for Jesus. For thirty years John lived with this mission, knowing that someday his moment would come. As a young man he sojourned into the wilderness as part of his preparation. It was there that he began his ministry.
What about you? What are your future hopes? What are the tough things you are going through now that could be prepration for something in the future?
More importantly: what might God be wanting to send you to do as a way to prepare others for the arrival of Christ Jesus in their life? How might what you are going through now be preperation for that future work of Jesus becoming real to someone important in your life?
It’s important to know that John didn’t know how everything is going to play out. Jesus had to give repeated instructions to John about what was going on, what was going to happen, and why. John had his doubts, and so do we – especially when times get really difficult.
The medium is the message.
It wasn’t just the words that John was preaching about repentance for the forgiveness of sins, it was John’s life, him as a person embodying this message that added power to his words.
Repentance is about change, about returning, about new possibilities.
John was in the wilderness re-enacting the story of Moses, preparing the people of Israel to re-enter the Promised Land as a cleansed, made-holy, recommited kind of people of God. Everybody came to see John to be baptized – they were so sick and tired of the corruption and evil – they wanted to see a change, they wanted to see God rule the land again – and that starts with a people being changed by letting God be king of their hearts, mind, body and soul.
You embody a message. You are a message. You are a message of hope (or despair), of repentance and forgiveness (or embittering grudges), of restoration and reconciliation (or envy and hate).
God sent John ahead of Jesus into Israel to prepare the people for the Christ (anointed one) to deliver them from their sins and sow seeds of shalom (peace). John preached a message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and renewal of allegiance to God.
God is wanting to send you ahead of Jesus into the world to embody the message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. When you repent of your sins, when you receive and extend forgiveness, when you sow seeds of peace and reconciliation, you are not only preparing people for the presence of Christ, you are embodying and extending the presence and work of Christ himself.
John begain his ministry on his own, but eventually formed a community from which he continued his ministry of preaching and baptising, of teaching the people how to repent, forgive, and start their lives over again in God. The same goes for us: whatever God calls us to do, wherever and to whomever he wants to send us, it will need to be in community. The gospel is embodied best by community. 
How might your perspective change on your present pain in light of the preparation God might be bringing you through in order to extend the healing and reconciling work of Christ to others in the future?
Who has God laid on your heart? What if some of the tough things you are going through now are preparation for what Christ wants to do through you for them?
If the medium is the message – and everything is prepration for embodying the message of the gospel – what kind of work do you know God needs to do in you now so that others can more clearly hear the good news of Christ through your words and works?
