Tuesday 28th November - 3 John

Today’s chapter is 3 John

Tom writes:

I love this last letter of John. It exposes what the apostles had to deal with. Apostolic life wasn’t a dramatic miracle followed by a dramatic miracle. Apostolic life was a dramatic miracle followed by someone slagging you off, followed by encouraging another believer, followed by dealing with someone who wants to be first, followed by a dramatic miracle. We can sometimes conjure up an image of being “anointed” that is so far removed from people’s normal life. We can think that being anointed would mean being freed from the grubbiness of actually loving sinful people. It is a massive shame when we do so. We see that, for John, the greatest joy was not an eye-popping miracle nor a standing ovation when he preached. His greater joy was hearing that his children were walking in the truth. John had seen so much. He said there wouldn’t be enough books in the world to write down all he had seen Jesus do. He’d watched as the fledgling Jesus-movement spread and was established in many countries around the Mediterranean.

Yet he never tired of the simple joy of seeing one person doing well with Jesus. John never lost sight of the children of Jesus; each one precious, each one to be loved and celebrated and rejoiced over when doing well. Doesn’t John’s heart remind you of Jesus’ heart? Doesn’t his delight in people exude divine dignity, doesn’t it glitter and glow like the goodness of God. I want to be like John. I want my greatest joy to be hearing someone rave about what Jesus is doing in their life. I want to embrace the grubby reality of raising sons and daughters so that I can whoop with wonder when they tell me they are walking in the Word. So I’m going to go looking for it. I’m going joy hunting; I’m pushing into relationships. I want to life the truly apostolic kind of life that sucks up the hard moments and the disappointments and the normalness of people, so that - one day - I will get to grin with gladness when they gabble about the greatness of their God.

Question for reflection

Do you know the joy of raising sons and daughters in the faith?