The cousins got to play together once a year, when their parents met in Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. It was a long trek of a few days each way for Mary and Joseph’s family. Jesus was eager to meet up with John, so he had to be patient as helped his mother keep track of his younger siblings. 
  The boys were different in many ways. Jesus was quieter and more pensive, but he could get caught up in John’s theatrics. John always made everything, well, more. Whether they were snacking on figs or playing hide and seek, John made it all more fun with his flare for the dramatic: “These figs were grown for the king himself, but they fell off the cart, and we are the lucky ones to eat them!”
  Their differences seemed to bond the two rather than creating space between them. As they anticipated their annual reunions, they each made plans that, once together, were sorted and ranked to make the most of their precious time together. They were not only cousins; they were buddies.
  As the years passed, John noticed that his cousin became more observant of the strangers they encountered as well as their relatives around the table. Before falling asleep, they laughed at some of  Jesus’ observations. “Uncle Avram wishes he were a soldier. He wants us to think he is tough, but he is more kind than he lets on.” Jesus chuckled at John’s imitation of “Crazy Edith. “She just wants to be noticed. Edith is lonely.”
  Jesus saw his cousin changing too. John became upset easily, usually when he witnessed abuse or deceit. Jesus had to restrain him more than once when a Roman soldier demanded free fruit from a helpless vender or cruelly treated a prisoner in shackles. In private John ranted about the abuses he noticed among the temple leaders too. He saw beneath the façade of religious authority. Jesus listened as he listed the leaders’ harsh demands and the ways they exploited the poor in God’s name. 
  As they grew into adulthood, the cousins were able to see each other as often as they could cover the distance between them. On occasion they met at a favorite spot by the river, cooling off in its waters before sitting on the bank, discussing their ideas about life. 
  So when Jesus approached the Jordan that day, the man he saw gesticulating as he preached to crowds of people was no curiosity, but his beloved friend. Still dramatic, John’s time in the desert seemed to have focused his rhetoric into a message of both challenge and invitation that captivated his audience. They were compelled to respond to this man whose words rang true and ignited a latent longing they hadn’t realized was there. It was exciting to see so many entering the water to be baptized. 
  John knew his cousin’s dedication to the LORD, knew how earnest he was when speaking of his Maker’s love and forgiveness. Jesus never spoke an unkind word, never let anxiety or greed dictate his behavior. John felt humbled and privileged to be both cousin and friend of Jesus. 
  He was startled when he spotted Jesus in the queue of those waiting to be baptized. Jesus did not need to repent! John tried to dissuade him, but Jesus quietly insisted on being included. He told John that he had felt in his gut that he needed to undergo this mysterious experience along with everyone else, having learned long ago that his inner urgings, if followed, always made him feel closer to the LORD.
  John protested, but he knew he would not prevail, so he baptized his cousin. It was an intimate moment, profoundly different from their other times in the water together. Then it opened up into something dazzling and holy. An intense ray of light broke through the clouds above, and what seemed like a luminous fluttering flowed out of it and hovered briefly before entering Jesus’s body. His eyes grew wide, and his face was radiant, ecstatic. 
  Then there came a voice whose source they could not identify. It was a message that everyone present heard but could never describe in terms of tone or volume afterward. They simply experienced, all at the same time, the words about the man next to John in the water, words that felt truer than anything they had ever known: “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
  John simply smiled, warmed by the affirmation of what he had gradually realized about his special cousin. Jesus met John’s smile with one of his own. But his expression also contained a hint of trepidation. They both realized that this would be a watershed moment. Jesus was being called to a bigger purpose, a role that would expand John’s predictions about him, far beyond what either of them could imagine. 
  Everyone at the river that day wondered about what they had seen and heard. Their baptisms had energized them, but they also sensed that their lives from then on would be connected with this man Jesus. 
  And they were right.