Christmas Beginnings…. Really?
John 1:1 “In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (NLT Jesus Centered Bible)
A Youth Worker friend shared this verse during a Christmas event we jointly ran through the local junior high school. It has been the verse he reflected on during the Christmas season on Jesus birth. This is not a normal go to book of the Bible to use for the Birth story but it has merit….
Beginning… yes this refers to starting, for example… the race begins at the start finish line. This implies to all that it has a start. Yeah, I know…. Dumb comment everyone knows that but do we carry that throughout other areas of life? For most the answer is no.
We live in a social media world where students (and I assume adults) who will post the start date (or anniversary) of their relationship with a person. Girls will add an emoji character at times… Facebook also post former pictures of you in the past as a memory moment… yeah, cool but a bit creepy.
We live in a world where colleges play sports against each other. Some are referred to as the greatest rivalry in college football, followed by a start date of this rivalry.
We live in a world that marks anniversary to employment, marriages, cars, vacations and things along that line.
We live in a world that marks buildings showing when they were built.
But what do we think when it comes the bible and its history?
We unfortunately change our thinking of beginnings… some argue the world is millions of years old, while others say it is younger, which is interesting how we justify and hold tight to different interpretations of the bible and the world’s creation.
One thing that I know for sure… and no matter what stance you stand on… John 1:1 shares that Jesus (the Word) was there… We can truly argue the world’s age until we are blue in the face or we agree to disagree on that is correct… but we can’t argue the fact Jesus was there.
The Word was with God. I always had sensitivity to this verse. It was one of the first verses in the bible I memorized. As my youth worker friend was talking about Jesus sharing Hope throughout the verses that follow and no matter what our darkness feels or looks like we can see light and gain hope from knowing Jesus is there.
It hit me. Jesus cares and was there before me, is there with me now and will be with me in the future. It is a gift for all people to know and carry the light of Christ during our dark times.
My prayer is simply that we would never doubt that Jesus was, is and will be with us. We have to choose to stay with Him. God is so good to us and we often don’t take time to remember and reflect on it.
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