Nothing announces the beginning of the day like the crow of a rooster in the soft gray light between darkness and sunrise.
Sometimes you run across roosters in the most unusual places.
I love running early in the morning in that place of gray light before sunrise when the sky begins to hint at the arrival of dawn.
I frequently run across a rooster, right near here, just down the street, in the trees behind the police department. The rooster crows as I run by. It makes me smile.
It is out of place, and that makes it even better, the new day catches my attention. I feel like I am in on a great and wonderful secret.
Have you ever met one of those people who just doesn’t belong? Who is out of place? Like a rooster crowing on Main Street?
Have you ever been that person?
Not from around here. Out of place. Out of time.
Different mannerisms, different expressions, different expectations, neuro-atypical.
Who just sees things differently.
Who sees a different world than the rest of us, that we just miss, unaware.
John the Baptizer.
The rest of us see the world as the stuff of families, jobs, economies, culture, entertainment, consumer things, survival, suffering, grievance, conflict.
Then there comes up someone who sees the Way of God entering and arriving into the mess of life, like a rooster on Main street. They cause us to pause.
John the Baptizer.
He was out of place.
He made our world seem so small, that perspective that comes from seeing the arrival of the Way of God.
John, he made everyone feel like they were out of place, like they were missing all the cues and clues of how life worked. That Rooster belongs on Main Street. It’s Main Street that is somehow out of order.
John, nothing cozy or inviting about him, he brings us to that place of being out of place, and he leaves us there.
That pause where our attention is brought back into perspective, that is John the Baptizer. He left everyone around him confused and dizzy by sudden perspectivity.
Some rejoiced, a Rooster on Main Street, wonderful!
Others…not so much…disliking that experience of being out of place.
That rooster, he announces the arrival of a new day, not another day, but a new day, a new world, a world of baptism and Spirit, of being set free, of letting go of what was, of starting over, the arrival of the way of God.
The rooster crows as Main Street rushes on by.
Get ready crows the rooster, get ready to be out of place and awkward, the Way of God is almost here. It is the great and wonderful secret that starts the Day.