Thought for the Day – Friday 4th September
‘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
21: 25)
Thinking
of John’s simple ending to his gospel made me think about what someone once
said about giving children’s talks – they said, just tell them a story or
something and end it with ‘and by the way Jesus loves you!’
I would
certainly not recommend this!
No matter
how much we need to tell children Jesus loves them they are the ones who ask
the deep, probing questions and they should never just be told a story ending
with ‘and by the way Jesus loves you!’ It is too simple!
I
love the way John ends his Gospel though, it is so simple and actually almost
childlike in its nature. Indeed, every time I get to this last verse it always
makes me smile because it reminds me so much of my teaching days. You see, each
week in class we would have a story writing session focusing on one particular
way of writing, like using capitals and full stops if the children were just
beginning to write or, if older, using paragraphs or adjectives or speech marks
and so on. Well some of the children when writing would produce a wonderful
story full of great description using loads of fantastic adjectives and adverbs
but then not really having thought their storyline all the way through to the
end or running out of time were then unsure of how to end their story and so
you would get something like these words of John. For example ‘after all this
then we went home and had our tea!’ or ‘all this happened and then I woke up
and it had all been a dream’ that kind of thing.
Simplistic
or not – I am sure John’s words are very true, for I am sure Jesus did indeed
do many other things that the gospel writers either forgot to write down, or
didn’t have the time to write down or didn’t have the words to know how to write of
such wonderful events.
The
other things may not have been written but thankfully scripture was and what we
do have written and open to us has the ability to speak to us and has spoken to
us across the years, spoken to countless generations and continues to speak to
this generation day and will still speak to generations to come. What has been
written still has the power to transform lives, can still bring people to faith
in Jesus, can still speak into all sorts of situations in our lives.
I
suppose as a preacher I do my best to bring afresh to you today the
significance of the message of scripture which has been written down and that
involves exploring different approaches and angles and interpretations.
However, although sometimes the message I share may challenge us, teach us, instruct
us or inspire us or sometimes even leave you cold, serving more to confuse than
illuminate what can be guaranteed is that at the heart of that preaching I will
be saying something which has been said many times before, because I am
proclaiming the age-old message of the gospel.
Throughout
time we have all done our best to fathom out and communicate the message of
those things which were written down, done our best to share the gospel message
with others through word and action, thankfully though that sharing of the
message does not depend solely on us for God’s word, such as is written down,
is able to speak for itself!
And by the
way, Jesus does love you!
Prayer
Loving
Lord,
We
thank you for those who took time to write scripture that we might have your
word before us in our lives. May your word speak to us, be our guide in life,
be our encouragement, our comfort, our support, our ‘go to’ self-help book. May
we find within the words of scripture your truth and seek to share that truth
in love. We ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Friday Fun
Time:
Here are your
trivia questions for today!
1. What’s your
‘favourite’ book of the Bible – your ‘go-to’ book in times of need or just
for
enjoyment?
2. Apart from
the Bible what is your favourite book?
3. How long is
it since you last wrote a hand-written letter and to whom did you write?
4. List ten
adjectives to describe yourself!
5. Do you know where to put an apostrophe
when writing or do you misuse them?
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