This week Craig suggested reading through a gospel to see Jesus and who He is. I decided to take the challenged and read the Gospel of John. I can’t get past John 1, I’ve been reading it over and over this week and this morning I realize why I can’t get to John 2.
John 1 (The Message)
The Life-Light
1-2 The Word was first,
the Word present to God,
God present to the Word.
The Word was God,
in readiness for God from day one.
3-5Everything was created through him;
nothing—not one thing!—
came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life,
and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
the darkness couldn’t put it out.
6-8There once was a man, his name John, sent by God to point out the way to the Life-Light.
He came to show everyone where to look, who to believe in.
John was not himself the Light; he was there to show the way to the Light.
9-13The Life-Light was the real thing:
Every person entering Life
he brings into Light.
He was in the world,
the world was there through him,
and yet the world didn’t even notice.
He came to his own people,
but they didn’t want him.
But whoever did want him,
who believed he was who he claimed
and would do what he said,
He made to be their true selves,
their child-of-God selves.
These are the God-begotten,
not blood-begotten,
not flesh-begotten,
not sex-begotten.
14The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
true from start to finish.
15John pointed him out and called, “This is the One! The One I told you was coming after me but in fact was ahead of me. He has always been ahead of me, has always had the first word.”
16-18We all live off his generous bounty,
gift after gift after gift.
We got the basics from Moses,
and then this exuberant giving and receiving,
This endless knowing and understanding—
all this came through Jesus, the Messiah.
No one has ever seen God,
not so much as a glimpse.
This one-of-a-kind God-Expression,
who exists at the very heart of the Father,
has made him plain as day.
I sometimes so desperately want everyone have “abundant life” in the light of Jesus that when it seems that darkness is winning I feel like a failure. I’m surprised at how quickly this feeling of failure can take me to my own dark places. And what’s crazy is that 99.9% of the things or people in my life can be moving closer to the light and experiencing the “exuberant giving and receiving” of Jesus, yet I will be consumed with the small percentage of darkness.
Why do I trust my emotions? Why do allow myself to go there?
In reading this passage over and over God finally got through to me this morning. HE IS THE LIGHT! My assignment is not to change darkness into light, I CAN’T DO THAT. Like John the Baptist I am to speak of the light, point people to the light and by the power of the Holy Spirit shine light into dark places. I can’t control the darkness. The darkness will either be consumed by the light or flee the light, the two, light and darkness, cannot exist in the same space. You would think that I would understand this by now, I have to press into the truth, what I know not what I feel. I am discovering more and more when I trust what is true I feel much better about life. There will always be darkness, I can’t fix that problem. I can continue to represent the light and trust God with the response of the darkness.
I’m starting to ramble, so it’s time to stop.
So, I’m going to begin John 2 this morning. I wonder how many days this journey will last?
