January 18-19, 2022

Nicodemus really should have known, that night, alone with Jesus

what Jesus really meant when He said "You must be born again."

He must have known, no more puzzled than he wasn’t before

what Jesus meant when He said "The wind blows where it wishes,

you hear it but you can’t see it, so are all who are born of the Spirit."

He had to have known, for as Jesus said, he was of Israel’s teachers,

he could not have not known at least some of what Jesus was saying.

Man’s rebirth through God’s immortal Spirit permeates the Scripture.

for Jeremiah knew, and Ezekiel and King David and even King Saul

(just before he became King, on his way home from meeting Samuel)

and Samuel and Moses and Joseph and Abraham, each of them knew

that for one to be born of the Spirit is to relinquish one's self to God

is to allow His creating in them a softened heart, fully attuned to Him.

But even if he didn’t know, even if the Scripture spoke nothing to him,

that night, alone with Jesus, Nicodemus had the best of all teachers.