Returned From Jordan

“And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan.” (Bible Lesson 9)

“Jordan” means death, and “Crossing Jordan,” or “baptized in Jordan” symbolizes death to self. When I truly enter into Jordan, deeply and sincerely embracing the Jordan experience, the result is neither emptiness nor blankness, but fullness of Life and Spirit.

“Returned from Jordan,” I will therefore be dead to self but, “being full of the Holy Spirit,” alive unto God. This means being absent from the body and present with the Lord. But why the demand that I divest myself of self, clothe myself with Spirit? And why this state of being full of the Spirit? Is it to indulge in a private, dreamlike, emotional binge? Hardly. For “the Spirit of God is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound . . .” (Is. 61)

Or as Mrs. Eddy says, in SH 255:3, ” ‘Let there be light,’ is the perpetual demand of Truth and Love, changing chaos into order and discord into the music of the spheres.” Death to self is becoming a more and more unclouded transparency – washed in Jordan’s waters – through which the Light of creation may pour increasingly unobstructed, unrestricted, undimmed, every moment, brighter and brighter, every day.

In this day, especially, when the powers of darkness are holding “untiring watch” (SH 563:19) and forging “new weapons” (2 Sam 21:16) to try to extinguish the Light of Life, Truth, and Love, may God help us all to hold even more energetic, indefatigable watch, and to maintain more receptive willingness to discover and wield new, as-yet-unused weapons of Light that the armies of heaven have now prepared for us to better search and destroy every high thing presuming to exalt itself against the knowledge of God (II Cor. 10:5).