What Was From The Beginning

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the Word of Life…

Picture the apostles, the struggle and responsibility. How to communicate the truth of their life-changing relationship with Jesus? Inspired by God, yes. Still, they were faced with the challenge of explaining what they had seen and experienced while Jesus was with them, and all that they had come to understand about the infinite breadth of God’s love for us. Far away from those other believers struggling to understand, somehow, the apostles had to speak the truth of it – in writing. Did they think, “How much will they really understand? How much can we hope for?” They wrote, and covered their words in prayer.

I hesitate to write about being a Christian and a writer. Even after forty-some years of trying to do it creatively, twenty of those semi-professionally, I still consider myself a novice. I feel the same about my relationship to the Word of Life. The two are bound up together and inextricably linked. I want both to be whole and healing, but how much can I hope for in this life?

…and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us…

How to communicate the seminal experience of your life, to those who have known only a fraction of the same experience, if at all? The apostles came to understand God’s eternal nature, His power, love, and sovereign goodwill toward us, as they walked the earth with God manifested – with the man, Jesus. They saw Him, touched Him, spoke with Him, heard the words from His own lips. They loved Him as a friend before they loved Him as their God. “You can, all of you, have this same rich experience of God,” they seem to be saying. “Listen! You can know this fellowship, too, and for an eternity.

Do I feel like such a novice because I’ve barely begun? Will I continue to ponder and illuminate my eternal relationship with the Word of Life through a heavenly version of creative writing...forever? Will I continue to improve, always increasing in understanding? “Further up and further in.” Infinitely? A heartening thought, that endless possibility.

...that we have seen and heard and proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.

It seems the apostles never stopped trying, even to the point of death, to explain what their experience of Jesus and His death and resurrection mean for all of us. In every way they could think of – metaphorically, poetically, creatively, scholarly, in simple language and lawerly, sometimes just the straight, unvarnished facts – no holds barred, all genres employed, to communicate the truth. They believed that these things they wrote, and the results of their writing, completed what was begun the day they met Jesus.

A God who knows us and wants to be known by us is a miraculous thing - it is almost unbelievable. It is also the only thing that makes sense, our only cure, and our only way home. It seems I, too, am compelled to keep trying to explain the joy and freedom I have found in this fellowship with the Word of Life. I struggle to do it in every way I know how, in my relationships, my work, as I “come in and go out,” as I write. There isn’t just one way. It doesn’t have to be chapter and verse. Except sometimes. Sometimes it does. These things I write, so that my joy may be made complete.