Today’s devotional reflections are from 1 John 1:1-4. This letter is written by John. It sounds like he has input from others in a community of believers. They were living in or near Ephesus (but that’s for another post).
I imagine Mary, the mother of Jesus, was living among that community. If you remember, before uttering those deeply troubling words, “it is finished,” before breathing his last breath, Jesus looked down from the cross to his mother and placed her in the care of John.
John tells how they really heard with their own ears, actually saw with their very own eyes, and touched with their very own hands the One who was from the Beginning. If Mary was in that community, which is highly probable, imagine the memories shared around the dinner table! They not only heard, saw, and touched him; they would have remembered him with each meal. Let that be ‘food for thought’ next time you participate in the Lord’s Supper.
Mary would have been the first to touch Jesus, the first to gaze into his face, the first to hear that feeble cry right after his tiny body left her womb, the first to cradle him in her arms. She would be the last to cradle his broken body in death. Women would have been the last to see his body, and the last to touch his lifeless body as they prepared him for the tomb! Somehow being unclean became an honor and not a disgrace!
It’s one thing to imagine Jesus’s life two-thousand years after He has ascended. It’s another to read the words from his closest companions centuries later. Close your eyes and let their words come alive. Let them pulse with the Spirit-filled energy of those first believers. Pentecost was not a story read about in Acts. They lived Pentecost! And they lived to write about it! That gives me goosebumps!
This One, sent from the Father, was not a figment of their imagination as the mockers taunted. This One was not a phantom nor a ghostly projection of their wishful thinking. He was human and they were among the first who dared to follow, who dared to believe. This One walked among them. This One is Eternal Life!
There was no way John and the women could remain silent. After witnessing LIFE up close and personal, after experiencing the blessings of Eternal Life in the flesh, John, Jesus’s mother, and this small community of Christ-followers, shout-out the story of redemption so others can find koinonia—peace and wholeness—with the Father, through Jesus Christ and with each other.
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