Genesis begins with God speaking the world into existence… “Let there be…”

The Gospel of John echoes the story of Genesis in it’s first line: “In the beginning was the Word.”

Somehow, before the creation of everything, there were the Words of God.

Norman Maclean, in his novella A River Runs through It, writes that there are words underneath the waters of the beautiful Montana rivers he loves to fish. Maclean imagines that God’s words are embedded in the very scaffolding of the natural world.

The Gospelof Johncontinues its poetic introduction to explain that the Word became a person and “moved into the neighborhood.”

Something mysterious happens whenwe open the Bible each day.We can’t quite explain how the reading of Jesus’ interaction with the woman at the well can transformour day — but it does.

In some way that it is difficult to articulate or explain logically,it invades our life.

I suppose that reading the Bible is the best reminder that we are living in a Story much greater than our own.

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth intimates that we are “poor players” living out our hour on the stage.

Those moments of being mysteriously transported into the Gospel of John might simply confirm that our actions take place on a far more meaningful stage than oldWill might have imagined. Perhaps our commute to work, our interaction with our peers, the way we handle our children, the way we treat our spouses arekey moments in a much grander play.

Maybe it just reminds us that we are not the central character of our lives, that we have a role in God’s greater story…

The great mystery of the Bible is found in the truth that we are inviting the very entity that sustains all of creation to move into our own neighborhood — into our daily lives.

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