“The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.” (1 John 1:2)
Today’s verse reminds me of Christmas, of Immanuel, of “God with us.”
Did God need to show up in person to make eternal life possible for us? Did he need to come in human flesh and walk on the ground and get sweaty and breathe hard with flesh-and-blood lungs? I suppose God could have accomplished his purposes anyway he wanted to, but his plan was to make it personal. He sent the the lone gateway to eternal life to make eye contact with us, to shake our hands, to wash our feet.
John saw “it” – the path to salvation – with his own eyeballs, just as God intended. John was one of our representatives for contact with eternity and his mission was to tell as many people what he saw as possible, including you and me.
Think: What does it mean to you personally that God was here in person as a human being, that Jesus lived here and died here and lived again? Why do you think that’s so much more valuable than if God had made a way for us to be saved “remotely”?
Pray: Thank God for sending Jesus to be with us in flesh and blood. Thank him that because of Jesus you can one day be with God in person, too.
Do: Because of the Internet and our mobile devices, we can participate in so many things now without actually being there. Make a quick list of five big events that still require us to show up in person to participate in.