The Tipped Hat

In 1940s South Africa, a young boy named Desmond Tutu walked with his mother through the streets of Johannesburg. She was a domestic worker, a Black woman in a society that told her daily she was less than human. Then something extraordinary happened. A tall white man in a black cassock approached them on the sidewalk. Father Trevor Huddleston, an Anglican priest, stopped, smiled, and tipped his hat to Tutu's mother.

Tutu never forgot it. In a world built on the lie that his mother was nobody, this simple gesture declared she was somebody — worthy of dignity, worthy of being seen. Decades later, Archbishop Tutu would say that moment planted a seed that shaped his entire life. One act of recognition revealed a truth that an entire system tried to deny.

When Jesus came up from the muddy waters of the Jordan, the heavens tore open and the voice of the Almighty thundered a declaration that no empire, no religious authority, no power on earth could revoke: "You are My beloved Son; with You I am well pleased." Before Jesus preached a single sermon, healed a single leper, or called a single disciple, His Father spoke His identity over Him.

Mark 1:11 reminds us that God does not wait for our accomplishments to declare His love. He speaks it first. Like young Desmond on that Johannesburg street, we are seen, known, and named beloved before we ever begin.