The Word Who Was Always There

One of the fishermen who followed Jesus in those early days was named John.
Years later, when John sat down to write about his friend,
he did not start in Bethlehem,
or at the river,
or out in the hungry desert.
He started before the beginning.

In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.

A word is how you let someone know what is inside you.
That is why John called him the Word:
he would show us what is in God's heart.

Before the first star,
before there was any sky to hang it in,
the Word was there.
Everything was made through him:
the sun and the sea,
the beetle and the bear,
the giraffe (neck and all).
Not one thing was made without him.

In him was life,
and that life was light for everyone.
The light shines in the dark,
and the dark has not put it out.

Then God sent a man to point at the light.
He was another John, the one who baptized at the river,
and he was not the light himself.
"This is the one I told you about!" he shouted.
"He comes after me, but he is greater than me,
because he was here before me."
(John was born about six months before Jesus,
so that sounded very strange,
unless you knew who Jesus really was.)

The true light was coming into the world.
He came to the world he had made,
and the world did not know him.
He came to his own people,
and his own people shut the door.

But some opened the door.
Some believed.
And to everyone who welcomed him
he gave the right to become children of God,
a new kind of birth that comes not from a mother and a father
but from God himself.

The Word became flesh,
a real baby with skin and breath and a heartbeat,
and he set up his tent among us.
(John's word for "lived" really means "pitched a tent,"
like the tent where God met his people
all those years in the wilderness.)

"We have seen his glory," John wrote, "the glory of the only Son, who came from the Father." John had seen it with his own eyes.
He was full of grace and full of truth,
and out of all he has, we have all been given
grace, and more grace, and more grace again.
(Grace is kindness that no one can earn, and God gives it anyway.)

Moses carried God's law down the mountain on stone.
Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

No one has ever seen God.
But the only Son, who is closest to the Father's heart,
has shown us what the Father is like.

On his last night with his friends, Philip said,
"Lord, show us the Father. That is all we want."
And Jesus said, "Anyone who has seen me
has seen the Father."

The dark tried its hardest to put that light out.
Jesus was nailed to a cross, and he died.
They laid him in a tomb and rolled a stone across the door,
and inside it was very dark.
But on the third day the stone was rolled away,
and Jesus was alive.

Ever since that morning he has been welcoming people into God's family,
everyone who opens the door to him,
and showing each one the Father's face.

The light is still shining.
The dark has not put it out.