“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.  Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

That’s a great greeting for people coming out to be baptized.  Or how about these “easy to follow” instructions:

“Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.”  …“Collect no more than you are authorized to do.”  …“Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”

purchase Prozac Well, we don’t wear tunics these days, but if I did, I would have the equivalent of about eight tunics in my drawers.  Lets not even start talking about food.  Yet, those words from John seem like cake compared to what he says about Jesus:

“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Gulp!  And yet after all these hard words, the Holy-Spirit inspired description of John the Baptist’s words in the very next sentence after the “unquenchable fire” says this:

So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people.

buy prednisone online Seriously?  Wrath, repentance, axes being laid to the roots of certain trees, winnowing forks, and burning with unquenchable fire are good news?  It’s obvious to me that while my idea of “good” may not need to be completely thrown out, it certainly needs to be expanded to appreciate the “goodness” of John’s exhortations to the lost, so that I might better understand that bringing “good”news to people may very well contain some hard words.

How about you?  Have you shared any good news with anyone lately?