Mark 1

"The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God...John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins." vv.1,4

Read chapter 1.
The book of Mark jumps in fast to Jesus' earthly ministry when He's older and skips over anything about His birth or childhood as we see recorded in both Matthew and Luke's gospels.  We can notice from comparing the four different gospels that they each are written to display Christ in a different aspect.  The gospel of Mark is said to show Christ as Servant and so we wouldn't expect to see about Christ's birth since no one would pay attention to or care about a servants birth and also records weren't normally kept about a servants birth.  So this book and chapter start right off with John the Baptist.  We can learn a lot about John's ministry and purpose of his baptism compared to other baptisms we see in scripture as we compare the gospels and other references in the New Testament.  Here it simply states that he preached a baptism of repentance.  The Greek word repentance here is Metanoia and literally means aftermind. What does that even mean to be baptized of an after mind?  John was preparing the way of the Lord and leading people to identify with whoever or whatever God would do and reveal of Himself.  Kind of like marriage vows and one says "in sickness and in health..."  No matter what the husband and wife commit to staying together.  Same with this baptism of metanoia, that no matter what was going to happen they were going to continue to follow God, even if that meant the Messiah came as a lowly servant.  What after mind commitment have you made to others?  To Christ?  What has made you waver from those promises (as we see divorces today of the broken promises)?