Determined to start my day right, I poured some coffee, sat at my kitchen table, opened my Bible, and read, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared, we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.”
Pausing for a moment, I sipped my favorite warm substance and continued, “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete” (1 John 1: 1-4 NIV).
As I simmered on the passage, I was struck by how many times John emphasized that he testified to what they had seen and heard. As a writer, I try to catch repeated words or phrases and change them.
But not John. He used them over and over to make a point.
Something very strange happened in Galilee up close and personal.
On Sunday morning, our church started a sermon series on the Gospel of John. As the last Gospel written, Matt Morgan, our pastor, pointed out that John didn’t stick to the facts already recorded. He painted the big picture.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning” (John 1: 1 NIV).
At one point, Matt wondered aloud if John and his friends ever asked Jesus what happened at the creation of the world. Seriously. They walked and talked freely with The Word—The Word who was with God and was God from the very beginning.
The more they believed, the more certain they grew of His divine heritage, the more curious they must have become.
When I start thinking like this, my faith soars. My soul stretches tight. And I fight hard to rise above our rational way of thinking, which doesn’t jive well with the notion that men of old walked with the Creator of the Universe.
It’s mystical. Magical. Utterly illogical.
Yet it helps me find solace in the tangled-up oddness we face every day.
Mesmerized by what he had seen and heard, John had to write. He had to find a way to communicate what made no sense: The God of heaven had come to earth in human form to redeem mankind.
Everything changed. Everything is still changing.
The light of the world has come.
All photos by pixabay.com
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