Thought for the week:​​

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For most of us, succession planning is something which begins a few years, months or weeks before we move on – if it happens at all. For John the Baptist, his whole life was about succession planning. His role was to hand on to someone who was greater than he was. The Messiah.

But, however good our succession planning, however smooth our handover, we find, as John did, that we have no control over how things pan out after we step aside. John thought he would be unworthy to untie his successor’s sandals. His successor, the Messiah, had other ideas. He washed his followers’ feet.
Jesus, the baby in the Christmas manger, will take us all by surprise. His life of humble service, his defeat of death and his own succession planning are not what John expects. Jesus’s succession plan, the gift of the Holy Spirit, was to be for us. Who’d have predicted that? M.C.