The Light Has Come Near
Today’s devotional
Recognition sometimes grows slowly. What first seemed like scattered experiences begins to reveal a pattern, though questions remain. A person's kindness, the beauty of creation, or the longing for forgiveness may awaken attention to a source we have not yet learned to name. Christian faith invites us to consider that source in Jesus Christ.
John begins his Gospel with the Word through whom all things came into being, then announces that the Word became flesh and lived among us. The movement is from God's eternal life toward our embodied history. God's self-disclosure is personal. Grace and truth become visible in a human life that can be encountered, heard, followed, and received.
This claim deserves more than treating Jesus as a convenient ending to our own argument. We can attend to the Gospel's account of what he says and does, how he receives people, and where his love leads. Our longings may help us recognize the importance of the questions, but they do not make every interpretation of Jesus equally faithful to him. Encounter invites learning, and learning may correct what we expected to find.
Read the passage with room for both recognition and surprise. What does it mean that God comes near within created, vulnerable life? Consider one way you have imagined God to be distant from an ordinary need. Bring that need before Christ, then look for a response shaped by his grace and truth. The light we seek is not held at the far edge of the world. The Christian proclamation is that God has come toward us, inviting a relationship that can begin while our understanding is still growing.
Adapted from Chapter 12: The Face in the Distance in Light in the Darkness by Dr. R. C. Titus.
Read the Scripture
Open each passage and read slowly. Notice what these words reveal about God and the life before you.
John 1:1-5 · WEBU
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2The same was in the beginning with God.
3All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that has been made.
4In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn’t overcome it.
John 1:14-18 · WEBU
14The Word became flesh and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the only born Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
15John testified about him. He cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me, for he was before me.’ ”
16From his fullness we all received grace upon grace.
17For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
18No one has seen God at any time. The only born Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him.
Pause and respond
For reflection
What assumption about God’s distance might need to be reconsidered in light of Christ’s embodied life?
A practice for today
Read John’s words about the Word becoming flesh slowly. Name one ordinary part of your life that feels distant from God, and bring it into prayer without waiting to make it more impressive or spiritual.
A prayer
God who has come near in Jesus, open my attention to the grace and truth of his life. Correct the assumptions that keep me distant and receive the questions I still carry. Help me encounter Christ through Scripture and faithful community, and respond to your nearness in the ordinary places of my day. Amen.
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