Lent Devotionals – Day 1

John 1: 1 – 28:

Everyone has their favourite Bible passages. For many, it is a beautifully written Psalm, a particularly stirring passage from one of Paul’s letters or a poignant parable of Jesus. For me, it’s John 1.

My best guess for why is because of my slight nerdy nature. In an obsession with wanting to know, wanting to understand, wanting to explain and to discuss, John 1 speaks to the rational side of me, not the emotional.

There are plenty of emotive sections in the Bible, plenty of poems and songs and prayers detailing people’s misery or praise. But there is far less that looks at the thinking-ness (I’m aware that’s not a word) of the human nature and our relationship with God.

In John 1, Jesus is described as the word. In the Greek the word that is used is ‘logos’, which is where we derive our word logic from – I assume you can see where this is going.

Later in the passage, verse five, in many translations, it states:

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it”

The word overcome can also be translated as ‘understood’. As such, we could say that darkness is something or someone that does not understand Jesus. What that says to me is that Jesus, more than just a comforter for the ill-minded or the figment of the hopeful’s imagination, makes sense.

As a teenager, that was a groundbreaking truth. I was someone who had always hoped that God existed. I always believed, but it wasn’t through thinking, it was through feeling.

John 1 tells us that Jesus, the full embodiment of God’s word, came down to Earth, came to dwell among us, came to meet us, to talk to us, to lead us, to pray with and for us, to teach us, to work miracles in us, to do all of that and more so that we could understand Him.

That, for a man who likes to know why 2+2=4, is utterly wonderful!