They believed that God had always walked with the Jewish people throughout their history and had spoken to them through their prophets, judges, kings, and priests. But, their history says that God was silent almost for four hundred years before God answered through Moses the long-standing prayers of His chosen people who had become slaves in Egypt.

It is said that heaven was silent again for four hundred years until announcing the second Moses - Jesus, John the Baptist appeared on the banks of the Jordan as the voice of God.

Hearing the message of repentance proclaimed by this priest in the desert, many people from Judea and the surrounding regions came to him. He baptized them all in the Jordan. The Gospel of Matthew says that the Pharisees and Sadducees also came to receive the baptism of repentance. In Luke’s Gospel, however, it is said that the Pharisees and Sadducees did not believe in John. Luke makes mention of three groups.

“The crowds”: by the crowds, he must be meaning the ordinary Jewish people. He asks them to share what they had.

The next group that approaches him are the tax collectors. They were outcasts. People who were condemned by the religious court as outcasts. Outcasts because they had accepted the job of collecting taxes from their own people for the occupying forces of the Roman Empire. Although they were outcasts from religion, for John who gave his voice to God they were not outcasts. He tells them to do their duty that comes from their job with honesty.

The third group that comes to John are the soldiers. In fact, they were Romans. The political opponents of the Jews. They were also Gentiles. Yet John, the man of God, receives them too. Perhaps he also baptized them. He instructs them not to commit injustice and corruption.

That must be the touchstones of real divineness and spirituality. Those who fall upon the name of God must be compassionate; announce sharing; not discriminate; love and embrace opponents or enemies!

Without these 4 factors, it will be difficult to see the presence of God-awareness in someone.