Day 38: Layers
Layers: they are everywhere. Take a new car for example. It is shiny and clean. It looks great. Underneath the hood is a wildly complex machine. There are days we, or an expert, need to get under that hood. However, most days, we simply enjoy driving it. In each of our lives, there are things we are the experts at. Our jobs, a hobby, maybe cooking, or something else. When necessary, we can “get under the hood”, but most days, we simply enjoy the drive. Where in life, can you “get under the hood”?
My first car was a Chevy Nova—straight six—as they like to say. I could pop open the hood and instantly recognize the parts. Nowadays, finding the oil dipstick is a challenge. I am pretty good at filling the windshield fluid—the blue liquid is a dead giveaway.
To do more, requires I pause and review why I opened the hood, and what I am trying to accomplish.
I have been going back and looking over my blog posts. Up through Chapter 12, I was trying consistently to point out how the writer of this Gospel, Jesus’ self-proclaimed best friend, was introducing us to Jesus.
Since then, in chapters 13 – 15, this best-friend has taken us “under the hood”. He has peeled back some layers. He has taken us deeper into this idea of Jesus as God. Actually, it is Jesus who has taken us there. The words we are reading are mostly direct quotes from what he said.
It has been a little intense. It has been a little technical. I worry it has been too religious. Quite frankly, I feel it has also been necessary.
To “get” what the Gospel is offering is to move beyond sappy sentiment about Jesus.
That does not however mean that by following Jesus we become cold-hearted know-it-alls.
We’ve been under the hood for a few days now. Let’s just close it, sit back, go for a ride, and listen to these next verses.
“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.”
We don’t need to tinker under the hood today, friends. Jesus, in today’s verses—well, he brings us out from and under the hood as it were—and reminds us:
He chose us – He calls us his friend – He loves us. In fact, he tells us that he loves us so much that he will die for us.
He Chose Us – He is Our Friend – He Loves Us.
Some days, most days, this is where I live with Jesus – not under the hood – but simply enjoying Him.