God Showing Us #adventbookclub – Day 27
The Word of Life
1 In the beginning was the one
who is called the Word.
The Word was with God
and was truly God.
2 From the very beginning
the Word was with God.
3 And with this Word,
God created all things.
Nothing was made
without the Word.
Everything that was created
4 received its life from him,
and his life gave light
to everyone.
5 The light keeps shining
in the dark,
and darkness has never
put it out.
14 The Word became
a human being
and lived here with us.
We saw his true glory,
the glory of the only Son
of the Father.
From him all the kindness
and all the truth of God
have come down to us.
15 John spoke about him and shouted, “This is the one I told you would come! He is greater than I am, because he was alive before I was born.”
16 Because of all that the Son is, we have been given one blessing after another. 17 The Law was given by Moses, but Jesus Christ brought us undeserved kindness and truth. 18 No one has ever seen God. The only Son, who is truly God and is closest to the Father, has shown us what God is like.
Depending on the kind of learner you are, sometimes it is so much easier to see someone do something to explain it, than to just read about it.
God has become a human being and lives among us. God, the beginning, the source, the creator, the light. He is here – in human life. Come to be with us, to walk with us, to share us. Jesus came to show us what God was like. To show us how God would live. Successive generations had failed to understand, or certainly to live out, what God was like, so now he has come to show everyone how to do it.
It wasn’t like God hadn’t said it before, the whole of the Old Testament is God trying to get his people to understand. Sometimes there were promising signs, but they never seemed to last for long. People have such short memories and soon get caught up in their own wants and needs.
The prophets did their best, and mainly suffered for it! And slowly came the understanding that someone was going to have to come and do something about it. As Maggi says (p121), the Promised Land had not been what was hoped. I guess the problem being that they took themselves with them. That’s always the problem if you try and move away from something, you are still there. It’s not a change of location that is required, but a change of humanity – a change of me! And the only way that is going to happen is by God coming – coming into the world, and coming into my life.
That God is right here – though we may not recognize him. Jesus lived among his community without them realizing who he was. He stood there as the others were baptised, and they didn’t know who he was. John has to show them
here he is, this is the One, God among us
Do we always recognize God? Do we always see him where he is, quietly getting on with things? Do we recognize him when he tries to show us how to live?
God is here with us, not just at Christmas, but everyday. Though he might not always look like we expect him to…
Forgive me Lord
for the times I don’t see you,
hear you,
or recognize what you are doing.
For the times
I know what you would do,
and yet I do something different.
For the times I run away,
yet fail to allow myself to be changed.
Thank you for coming into the world
to show us
what you are like,
how you would live,
how we should live.
Help me to grasp that
and live it myself
This year, several of us are reading Beginnings and Endings by Maggi Dawn and joining together to comment on it. Do join us at the Adventbookclub Facebook page, follow #adventbookclub on Twitter or comment below. If you are also reading and blogging on this book, let me know and I will link to your blog.
Pam's Perambulation 