Today will you act as if life is about you?

That nothing's more important than your wants, your needs, your feelings?

We human beings like to be the one who breaks good news, who share good news with other people.

I'm watching my granddaughters and they come in, having experienced the same thing, and one begins

to tell the story and the other one says, but I wanted to tell that story.

I wanted to give the good news.

You always do this.

You always say it before I get a chance.

That is so human to do.

But imagine what it was like to be John the Baptist.

Imagine what did he like to be chosen by God to break the best news ever.

But imagine for John the intersection of awesome honor and devastating humility.

See, John had to face the fact that although he was a well-known

and provocative preacher, he was now called to surrender the great stage,

to surrender recognition, focus, honor, and praise to someone

greater than him. And although we're not in the position of John the Baptist, we are called to do the

same, to recognize that we're never on center stage, that the great spotlight is never on us,

that life at its core is not about us. Like all of us, John the Baptist, to do what he was called to do, had to confess to himself

and others that life was not about him. He had been chosen not for his own glory, not for his

own power, not for his own recognition, not for his own prestige, but for the glory of another.

I love how the apostle John, a different John, introduces to us John the Baptist.

Here are these words.

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