Patmos

The ink sputters on the white clean parchment. I have re-lit the light, writing in the light from the bending taper. At the close of the year, I think of our Lord's Birth Day. The young mother. Ostracised and alone. Husband beginning to understand. Long journeys from Kings and mothers heavy with child. Roads thick with dust and nailing heat. Aching back from camel or donkey seat. New star. Unearthly guiding light. Shepherds with their smelly sheep suddenly suffused in light, music and glory. Rushing to Bethlehem to see and then rushing away to tell.

But this baby, this God-with-us bundle of joy, Was and Is, before anything else was. With God himself, right when the world was first being made. Making it happen.

So in this Word, this revealer of the truth, this Person by which things happen, by a great mystery, he is a man to us but also light and life and goodness and God Himself. He showed us what God is like. He showed us the way back to him. The path of forgiveness and grace.

He wasn't recognised truly for who he was, not in birth, or life or in death. The empty tomb, the shining angels saying "He is alive", the wounded hands made it plain. And belief in this forgiveness-giver, life-giver, grace-giver and blessing-giver makes us children of Most High God.

And so I begin, this record, so that many will read and believe - I write so they might believe and have the life that is life. I write to add to the many books that will be written. The world is not big enough to contain all the books that could be written about the things our Lord did. I write so that our Lord Jesus might be known.


"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John.
He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe.
He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No-one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known."

John ch 1 vs 1-18 (NIV)

"But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.....Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

John ch 20 vs 31 and ch 21 vs 25 (NIV)