Day 3 - Week 3 - "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."

"We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only..."

Seems like many nights I sit down and think, "Now what in the world do I have to say about that?"  And then I start researching the verse, and thoughts just start coming into my head and remembrances of other verses that tie to the verse we are memorizing come to mind and it just gets so exhilarating!  As I told someone today, it is just so fun (yes, Bible study can be tons of fun!) when you mine a nugget out of the treasures of God's Word and have the ability to share your find!  Don't you think God gets tremendous pleasure out of seeing us really enjoying His message to us?  OK - none of this was connected with Scripture memorization, or our verse of the week, I just wanted to let you know that I'm having a blast doing this...what a great way to end the day!

So when did John see Christ's glory?  And what about that experience convinced him that he had seen the One and Only (in the KJV, it read "the only begotten" and in other places same word denotes, "His only begotten son," i.e. John 3:16)?  Remember when we determined that John wrote his gospel many, many years after Christ's ascension to heaven and he wrote it with a passion to convince his readers that Christ was God's Son sent to earth.  Why did John have this passion?  Why was he so convinced?  Have you ever read the account of Christ's transfiguration which John witnessed? 

Matthew 17 gives this remarkable account:
"After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.
Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters--one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah." While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!" When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. "Get up," he said. "Don't be afraid." When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, "Don't tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead."
Now, I ask you, if you experienced that, would you be convinced?  John wanted us to be as strongly convinced as he was...are we?  We may not have had the mountain top experience that John had, but we can "see" what he saw through his testimony, and with the gift of faith enabled by the Holy Spirit, we too can  "see His glory" and we can hear Him say, "Get up, don't be afraid", look up and see nothing except Jesus, ready to travel with us, coming down from the mountain, down to our regular every day ho-hum kind of living, but not so ho-hum any more!  We've got a story to tell, just like John does!