Life-spark: Expose yourself to radiant life today. (John 1:1)
I went to the dentist the other day and they took x-rays of my teeth. Exposure to radiation was good because it created a picture that showed the true condition of my teeth, but too much exposure can somehow make your cells go rogue. Thus, before they took the pictures, they put a lead vest over my chest.
As I read through the book of John in the Bible, I am exposing myself to Life: “Before anything else existed, there was Christ, with God. He has always been alive and is himself God.” (John 1:1, TLB)
John says that Jesus Christ had always been alive and would always be alive. That’s pretty amazing because most aliveness that I see is being nibbled at by deadness, and is eventually terminal. So like John, I’d like to expose myself to that radiant life.
With this particular radiation, there is no such thing as too much exposure. John says that the closer we get to Christ, and the longer we stay close, the more alive we become. It must have worked for him, because I read that he lived to be about 100. And when he died, he graduated to an even higher state of aliveness.
John starts his book off in an audacious way. He says that when human aliveness, or amoeba aliveness, or animal aliveness began, there was another Aliveness that their aliveness came from. The book of John begins with the same three words that the Bible begins with: “In the beginning.” John speaks of Jesus as a being who was being before human beings were being.
I got so attracted to this idea of unstoppable aliveness that I decided I’d read John’s book, one sentence at a time, hoping to get exposed to the same Aliveness he experienced. Want to join me?
Life-question: What book, or person, or group of people could I spend time with in the hope of being exposed to contagious aliveness?