Daily Devotional • March 3
A Reading from John 1:1-18
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
Meditation
These introductory verses to the Gospel of John, so familiar to many of us, bring news of a God who wants to be closer to us. The God who made the world came into the world. This is shocking. This is like saying a potter moved into the pot she created. The Creator God didn’t just come into the created world; the Creator God also took on createdness. The potter became a clay-thing. The eternal second person of the Trinity became a human being. As Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message, “The Word became flesh and blood, / and moved into the neighborhood.”
“We have seen his glory,” John writes. This situation reminds me of and yet is so different from Moses’ plea in Exodus 33:18: “Now show me your glory.” While the LORD agrees to “cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and … proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence,” the Lord tells Moses, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live” (33:20). This unspeakably, unapproachably glorious God is the same “Word” John the evangelist has encountered in the flesh.
You’d think we’d notice such a glorious coming. And yet, John writes, the world does not recognize this God when he comes. We don’t just not recognize him; we want him dead. And it’s only when the threat of death becomes real that Jesus announces that the hour of his glory has come (John 12:23). What we would call ultimate defeat is what Jesus calls “glory.”
But it is precisely God’s suffering that makes our closeness to him possible. It is precisely his willingness to die that gives us a claim to life as God’s children. In fact, God’s redemption of and relationship to human beings is the reason the cross can be called glorious. As the author of Hebrews writes, Jesus “for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). In God’s war against sin and death, we’re what’s at stake. God’s victory is our relationship and life with him.
Laura Howard is a writer from Dallas, TX, now based in Wheaton, IL, where she works in Student Wellness at her alma mater, Wheaton College. Laura’s portfolio of writing, teaching, and artwork can be found at letmebeheavy.substack.com.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
Holy Apostles Episcopal Church, Katy, Texas
The Diocese of Maiwut – Province of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan
