A journey towards intimacy with God...

In the Upper Room, hours before his arrest and with the knowledge of what was to come weighing heavily upon him, Jesus speaks to His Father. He speaks private, passionate words but he does not speak them privately, as he has done in the past when he has withdrawn to spend time alone with his Father. These were spoken at the table, for the disciples to hear, and John records them in his gospel. Is he sharing with his closest friends a glimpse of what his suffering will make possible- a relationship with God as Father?

"Father, the hour has come....

I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in the name you have given me, so that they might be one, as we are one...Now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves."
John 17: 1, 6-11, 13

 In a week of increasing shadow and foreboding, where tensions and betrayal surround him, Jesus' sense of purpose and the source of his strength shine with a clear unwavering light. His prayer here is that we too may journey with such joy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

advent day two

Advent Day TWO~ Every one of you, hide among the rocks and in the ground, Because the LORD is fearsome, marvelous, and glorious. When the LORD comes, everyone who is proud will be made humble, And the LORD alone will be honoured. The LORD All-Powerful has chosen a day When those who are proud and conceited will be put down Isaiah 2: 10-12 What are we waiting for? Its good to remind ourselves  of who God is. What words would you use to describe God? Glorious?...Marvellous?...Fearsome? Try to spend some time today in a place where you can see something of God’s glory– it might be at the sea, under a starry night sky, watching a sunset or down on your hands and knees with the insects. God created this world we live in. He controls it, orders it, sustains it. He breathed life into our bodies– and He will decide when life leaves us. This is the LORD we worship. And he has chosen a day to return to earth in unmistakable power and glory. The angel choirs who sang to shephe...
Read more

Peter- walking a rocky road

Sometimes reading self help books or well-meaning blogs can make us feel that adopting a regime, a mantra or a new habit will lead to measurable results in a steadily increasing way. We feel as if we should be drawing a progress chart that climbs steadily upwards- but real life is just not like that. Maybe that's why so many of us find Peter an encouraging character in Scripture. When Jesus changes Simon's name to Peter, meaning the Rock, we cheer for him as we see Jesus recognising his strength of character. Jesus replied,  ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter,   and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades [  will not overcome it.   I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be  bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be   loosed in heaven.’   Then he ordered his...
Read more

Isaiah 8

Why do people not read the Old Testament more? I imagine it's because of passages like this one- it's full of incomprehensible Hebrew names and places, which seem to have had some sort of significance to the first people to read them, but are off-putting to us today. Is the only way to read a passage like this to get out a concordance or commentary, and work out who all these people are? Or should we just ignore the stuff we don't understand, and skip straight to a verse or two that we can make sense of? One thing that reading through Isaiah one chapter at a time is showing me, is that the second option is not a valid one. the bits we might chose to pull out rarely mean what we might expect them to. It is worth pausing and asking what message they gave to the people of the time- even if that doesn't seem to be a message that is relevant to us today. This is a book that tells us about God, not offers us a quick fix for our problems and concerns. So in the middle of this ...
Read more