Our best and brightest are beside themselves with hearing the news of amazing discoveries emerging from the Webb telescope’s look “back in time” toward the Big Bang. They are excited because, so goes the thinking, the more we know how it began, the better we understand how things are now, and, perhaps, how they will go in the future. Then, it is hopefully assumed, we would know more about how to live well and wisely. Trouble is, even with our increasing knowledge, our world continues to decline. How can we make sense of suffering and wickedness?

In the Greek of the New Testament there is a word that expresses how all things fit and work to make for life. That word is LOGOS. It is the root of our word “logic” and all our “ologies”.

John’s Gospel takes us beyond what the Webb telescope will ever see. Before the beginning was the LOGOS. And, says John, the LOGOS not only was with God, the LOGOS was God! Here is a wonderful mystery. The Creator of the universe the scientists ache to understand wants us to know more not only about this amazing place, and our lives in it; God wants us to know Him through ongoing interactive relationship.

The whole Bible prepares us for the Gospel of John’s audacious claim. The LOGOS of God came in human flesh to dwell among us and show us how to live well and wisely in this magnificent universe (John 1:14). Miraculously, Jesus Christ is the LOGOS come to expose and defeat evil, sin, and death on the cross. Amid human history there has been another “Big Bang.” With Jesus’ resurrection, God’s new creation bursts out in life and the darkness cannot overcome it. The Bible you hold in your hands contains first-hand witness to those who were there at the beginning. It offers us wisdom, correction, encouragement in our ache not only to know how to make sense of our lives, but how we can know the Creator of this vast universe as our loving Father.

Our loving God,

      As I read your word today show me a little more of the deep wonder of your love for your creation and my part in helping to make all things new.