Up close and personal
Many people today have Facebook “friends” that they’ve never met in the flesh... or perhaps they only bumped into them once at some conference, or on holiday. Then there are the people we feel we “know” because we’ve followed their blog or read about them in the newspaper… but haven't met them in the flesh either.
Today is the first day of December, the beginning of Advent. Everyone knows what that is about; it’s about God Himself coming to earth, to be born as a human being. For thousands of years, God had been giving His written Word - through Moses and the Prophets. Being a God who speaks is so much a part of who He is, that one of the Bible authors uses “the Word” as a name for Jesus. (Read John chapter 1 verses 1 - 14) The Word is eternal; He was there in the very beginning and is the Creator of everything that exists.
But even God, the ultimate communicator, knew that the written and spoken word wouldn't quite be enough for people to really “get” who He is and what He’s like. He knew that, at least once, people needed to experience Him as a real person, with skin on. And so one day, John tells us, "the Word became flesh." Jesus came as a human being and lived among us - with the ultimate goal of dying for our sins, but before that, to demonstrate up close and personal what God is really like. And in verse 14, John highlights three aspects of that:
- Firstly, Jesus was amazing (“we saw His glory”)
- Secondly, He was kind, loving and forgiving (“full of grace”)
- And thirdly, He taught and demonstrated truth (“full of truth”)
In subsequent generations, we don’t have Jesus with us in the flesh, but we can still know Him up close and personal. Even though He is not physically here any more, we don’t need to limit our experience of Him to superficial one-liners, like Facebook or Twitter. We can still know Him “face to face.” Like it’s said of Moses (in Exodus 33:11 or Deuteronomy 34:10), the Lord spoke to him face to face, as a person speaks to a real (not a Facebook) friend.
Let’s make time to deepen our friendship with God during this Advent season.
