I didn’t sleep well again last night. My chest is tight, my breathing shallow, my body hurts . . . I’m fed up. Then I remember the doctors and nurses who had no sleep last night . . and I think of those who spent last night crying over loved ones lost . . . and I think of my son and daughter-in-law taking emergency parcels to hundreds of neighbours in Paraguay who have no income, no food, no plumbing, no health service to turn to . . . . and I think of my two young Grandsons, so happy for the most part thanks to the amazing job their parents are doing keeping them busy, secure, safe . . . and how even they weep sometimes, missing their friends and family, maybe even a little scared . . . and I remind myself that God loves and hurts with every single one. My problems, so small in comparison to those of others, are as important to God as everyone else’s. It’s hard to get my head around that.
But “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17).
Probably the most famous verses in Scripture.
God loves me. Utterly, totally, irrevocably, limitlessly.
It took me a long time to accept that - and I still don’t understand it, and never fully will; let’s face it, if we could understand God he wouldn’t be God. But sometimes I don’t believe it either. Sometimes the evidence of my eyes, my ears, my personal experience tells me that God can’t possibly love me, love this world. If he did there would surely not be so much pain and suffering.
I need to know him better!
So my plan during these weeks of enforced isolation is to start in John’s Gospel, because John tells me more about the person and nature and heart of Jesus than any other Gospel writer. If I want to understand God better I need to know Jesus better - Jesus himself said that “If you really know me you will know my Father as well . . . Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father . . . I am in the Father and . . . the Father is in me”
Amazing claim! Either Jesus was a pathological liar or he is truly one with God. One thing he certainly wasn’t was just another nice guy who went around doing good. No nice guys claim to be God, only crazy ones.
Nice guys who just went around a small part of the Ancient Near East doing good but died aged 33 aren’t any use to me, or to this world in 2020. I need to know that Jesus is alive today and that his compassion for people on the margins of society, his power to heal minds and bodies, his anger over injustice and prejudice, his disdain for pious religiosity, his sorrow over suffering and pain was not confined to a tiny portion of the world 2000 years ago, but that his love for us and his power to change lives and his plan to restore the world he created into a place where there will be no more tears, pain or suffering, is undiminished.
John seems a good place to start, and in particular John Chapter 8.
Jesus is once again challenging the religious establishment who think that because they are descendants of Abraham they have the monopoly on truth. Jesus explains to them the difference between religion and faith. He has not come to teach religion, with all its narrow life-draining restrictions, he has come to offer the free gift of new life.
And they’re furious - ‘who do you think you are?’
Jesus’ reply is to talk of his relationship with his father -
and then he effectively closes the conversation by dropping a large rock into the pool.
He says “very truly I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am!”
At which point they pick up actual rocks to stone him to death as a blasphemer.
Because they know exactly what he means.
He didn’t say “before Abraham was born, I was”. He said “I AM”
They knew what Jesus was saying because they knew their Scriptures. These were religious men! Jesus is identifying himself with God.
When Moses met God in burning bush God says ‘I am who I am” (Ex.3:14)
Literally, He is saying I am uncaused, I am self-existence - I am simply because I am - there never was a time when I was not and there will never be a time when I will not exist. I AM existence, I have no beginning and I will have no end. In me all things that exist have their being - and Jesus is saying ‘that’s me!’
This is what I need to hear right now! I have a powerful Saviour, an eternal Saviour, a Saviour who has loved me for all eternity, whose plans are unchanged despite the mess the world is currently in, and in whose loving care I am secure. Even in my darkest hours I can lean on Him.
“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust’
Psalm 91:1-2
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