The Gospel story is rapidly moving to a climax.
Chapters 17 and 18 move us from the intimacy of Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane through to His arrest and trial before Pilate. There is breath-taking speed and unimaginable injustice in the whole process. I imagine the cohorts of heavenly beings holding their breath – is this really happening to the Father’s only Son?
Please don’t hurry your readings this week; take time to reflect on the enormity of what was happening. Sinful creatures were plotting and carrying through the execution of the Creator. For just a few hours God’s enemy, the devil, seems to be getting the upper hand. Jesus, the eternal and holy Son of God, accepts suffering at the hands of those He created; and it is only in retrospect that we discern the purposes of a loving God being worked out.
v 21. Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts.
As John came to the end of this letter he had just room for one final plea. (I feel it was written in the margin, so to speak, or sideways down the scroll, or even as a PS.) It is the simple but urgent plea to stay focussed.
Many of us know what it is to mislay our glasses. We had them a few minutes ago when we were reading the paper, but where did we put them down? We really need to read the cooking instructions on the side of the packet but we can’t focus. We try hard, but misread the prescribed oven temperature – it seems to say 1800 (in reality it is 1500 ) so the meal gets spoilt. We were unable to focus on the small print, so things go wrong.
With the complexity and speed of life today it is all too easy to lose focus on God. There is that demanding ping from someone on the smart phone, the email that urges us to buy now before stocks in the shop run out, Whatsapp tells us our children are on the way home, and there is a tweet from …. So we find ourselves running round in circles and it is desperately difficult to focus on any one thing in particular. That’s life in the 21st Century, so how do you find time and space to focus on God?
Well, you don’t actually have to find, or make, special time for God! The emphasis is on living with God in every moment. Sure, there may be the occasional special quiet times, but focus is a 100% occupation; it is for every moment, every day. And it is not so much that we focus on God but that we look at the world and events through the God-lens. We learn to take a God-filtered view that sees the world as God sees it, and respond accordingly. We live, not with a rose-coloured view of the world nor with a dark and despondent view, but with a God-tinted view to see where He leads us in it.
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