COME AND SEE!

WORD FROM THE CENTER: MONDAY, JANUARY 15, 2024

Welcome to “Word from The Center” MONDAY, a devotional word from the Center of our faith, Jesus Christ, with reflections on His Word. I’m Gregory Seltz. Today’s passage is John 1:43-46, where the Bible says,  

43 The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.”

44 Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. 45 Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. “Come and see,” said Philip.

COME AND SEE!

Someone said that the medicine of modern life is the “joy of not knowing where you’re going, the confidence of not knowing how to get there so that you can have the peace of not worrying about when you’ll arrive.” Well, the God who became man in the Babe laid in the manger seeks to shake us from such doldrums and give us the gift of forgiveness, life, and salvation on His terms alone.

That’s why the call in our reading today to “come and see” is so powerful. To put one’s faith in Jesus is to believe in what He tells you, to go where He says to go, and to trust that where He takes you is where you need to be. That’s why Jesus is not merely a prophet or a teacher. He’s the world’s Savior. It’s an “all or nothing” thing with Jesus. He’s the antidote for ancient man and modern man. He’s all that and more. So, come and see for yourself.

 That’s the message that Philip gave to his friend Nathaniel in today’s reading. Philip’s invitation to Nathaniel, and Nathaniel’s later encounter with Jesus would change his life forever. That’s the way it works when you meet the Savior of the world. When you meet Jesus on His terms, even your false, preconceived notions can’t get in the way. Can anything good come from Nazareth? Come and see…because when it comes to seeing the Christ of Scripture, such an encounter moves us from modern banality and post-modern skepticism to being “surprised by joy.”

 Surprised by Joy is the title of a book written by one of the most reluctant converts to Christianity in modern times. His name was C.S. Lewis. Yes, He’s the author of the Chronicles of Narnia and Mere Christianity, to name a few of his most popular books. This eventual defender of the Christian faith to the modern mind was at first a reluctant convert. But his friends kept challenging him to “come and see,” to read and get to know the Jesus of the Bible, and that finally made all the difference in Lewis’s life. In his engagement with the Christ of the Scripture, he saw a Savior who didn’t really wait for us to come to Him; instead, He came to and for us. He saw a Savior who came to people like Philip, and, through Philip, He came for people like Nathaniel too. On Christmas day, we heard the message that Jesus came for us all, each and every one of us (see Luke 2:10, 32). Lewis says this of his conversion to faith in Jesus:

 You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.[1]

I pray today that, through the words of the Bible, you encounter what Nathaniel did that day through Philip -- an invitation to an encounter with Jesus. C.S. Lewis called such things “dangerous encounters.” In Surprised by Joy, he writes

A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere — “Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,” as Herbert says, “fine nets and stratagems.” God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.[2]

The “unscrupulous” God of the heavens seeks you out today too. He comes clearly to us through the words of the Bible. He comes to us through the witness of our Christian friends. He comes seeking to surprise us with His joy, to overwhelm us with His salvation, and to grant us His forgiveness and a peace that passes all understanding. Yes, the Bible’s witness blows our minds concerning how gracious our God is! Follow along with us these next few weeks as we see this Jesus even more clearly. Come, see, and believe for yourself.

PRAYER: Dear Lord Jesus, we are often a reluctant people. We sit in judgment daily about how things should be on our terms. Bring us to repentance, and give us a “come and see” attitude that can be satisfied only by an encounter with You through Your Word. AMEN.

[1] C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, chapter 14, page 266; cited from https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/conversion-story-of-c-s-lewis-9821

[2] https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/conversion-story-of-c-s-lewis-9821