1-5 Jesus said these things. Then, raising his eyes in prayer, he said:
Father, it’s time.
Display the bright splendor of your Son
So the Son in turn may show your bright splendor.
You put him in charge of everything human
So he might give real and eternal life to all in his charge.
And this is the real and eternal life:
That they know you,
The one and only true God,
And Jesus Christ, whom you sent.
I glorified you on earth
By completing down to the last detail
What you assigned me to do.
And now, Father, glorify me with your very own splendor,
The very splendor I had in your presence
Before there was a world.
6-8
I spelled out your character in detail
To the men and women you gave me.
They were yours in the first place;
Then you gave them to me,
And they have now done what you said.
They know now, beyond the shadow of a doubt,
That everything you gave me is firsthand from you,
For the message you gave me, I gave them;
And they took it, and were convinced
That I came from you.
They believed that you sent me.
Jesus Christ came to make God ‘knowable’; so we might know the one true God.
No one is prevented from knowing God by God. God does not predestine anyone to blindness and disbelief. We don’t discover God with our minds alone. The mystery is too great! We discover God by trusting the one God sent, Jesus Christ. And following Him to see what we can see, and find what we can find. (Isn’t this the way love is too?)
Knowing begins with trust.
Then knowing becomes a matter of obeying, acting on this trust.
When we do we discover how true it really is.
To seek to know is to trust; to trust is to act, to act is to discover - now we know!
To follow Jesus is a journey of discovery. It is learning who God is.
“And to those who obey Him,
whether they be wise or simple,
He will reveal Himself in the toils,
the conflicts, the sufferings
( and we can add the joys)
which they shall pass through in His fellowship,
and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn
in their own experience Who He is.”
Albert Schweitzer,
“The Search For The Historical Jesus”
Prayer thought for the week: “Lord, help me to trust, act, and discover how real you are.”
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