Day 1, John 1
April 29, 2010
Over the next 3 weeks, a bunch of high school students and I will be reading through the book of John together, 1 chapter at a time. My goal is to post little snippets each day of what stands out to me, what affects me, and hopefully lend some insight into these verses for students reading them for the first time. Today is day 1. Do work.
I LOVE the beginning of John. Statements like “without him nothing was made has been made” and “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” are fascinating to me. Eugene Peterson translates the latter verse as “God moved into the neighborhood.” For the first time in history, people were talking to the Word, the expression, the exact representation of the character and love of God. This man, Jesus, carried the full weight of being God, and the full reality of being human, taking on emotion, and embodying love. Awesome stuff.
Entire books have been written on the theology of the first 14 verses of this chapter, but I’m going to leave with this… “In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” I think this statement alone has HUGE implications for how we live. It is not meant to say that men and women are perfect. In fact, quite the contrary; in men and women there is darkness. BUT a light that gives life still shines in men and women who look towards and identify with Jesus. THERE IS LIFE IN HIM. And there is where we start…and hopefully finish.
Have a great day 1 in John, friends.
I think something that I caught during this reading of John chapter 1 that I have missed before is how gangsta John the Baptist is/was. I wish I was more like that. Maybe not so much living in the wilderness, but spending my days speaking about God. I have to imagine that speaking the words about the Messiah that John did were incredibly humbling, but empowering and life-giving.
I want to be known as the kind of person whose life speaks loudly of the God who is coming and is already here. If people think I’m crazy, maybe it’s because I am. But that’s cool. You’ve really got to be into something to be like John. You can’t fake that.