The Testimony of John

(Please refer to the prior post for the context of this one. Obviously I did not master the technique of scanning--but I will.)



This is how it began:
When the eternal, the unnamed,
uttered the word God,
that word, too, was God.

God was the first to name God.

Before that, there was only silence and the unnamed.
God was the one word that broke the silence,
and made possible the naming of the unnamed.

Once the word God was spoken,
all speech became the vessel of light;
knowledge, truth and freedom
could never again be suppressed.

John came to remind people of this:
he came to help people say the word.
He, of course, was not God;
but when he spoke for God,
it was as though people heard the word for the first time.

When this new speech burst upon the world,
into a world of darkness,
it was a light so brilliant
that for many blindness was the only result.
Being blinded, they were speechless;
and being speechless, for them the silence remained.

But to all who stood in its light came speech;
and to all who spoke came the poetry and power of creation.
They spoke now not out of need,
nor because of the will to dominate;
but the word spoke itself through them.

God became our common tongue.
When God was named by people,
all language became sacred;
and we saw its glory,
the glory that it has as the only word of God,
full of grace and truth.

Now, the new name John gave to God was Jesus.
John testifies: "Jesus is the word, which when spoken,
reveals more about God than any other word;
for, in truth, God named Jesus; not I."

We, too, now realize this:
that all talk about God has forever changed because of Jesus.
Moses gave us God's Law;
Jesus is God's truth--that'e the difference.

The story that follows is about Jesus,
God's true word to us.