Man's Best Friend

I mentioned it before, but while I drive, I listen to the audiobible.
Now, I'm not more holy than anybody else (probably less holy actually). Full disclosure: I didn't select the audiobible for any other reason besides the fact that it was the only audiobook in our library at school.

It's soothing. Believe you me, trashy pop music has its place in Dallas traffic, but long distance driving goes to the Bible.

Currently, I've made it through the gospels and acts.

Now, I've grown up reading the gospels, studying them in various Bible classes all growing up, and have had all sorts of other interactions. I felt as though I knew those things. Listening to them, though, I heard so many things I had never heard previously. It felt like experiencing the gospels for the first time.

And, listening to them all in a row, I was able to really hear the ways in which they differed from one another in tone and content. The intended audiences were made very clear.

But the one that made me really feel was the gospel of John.

John, as we know, was the "beloved disciple", the "disciple that Jesus loved."
As I listened to John's account of Jesus, I finally heard that. Patty Kirk, my creative writing professor in university, always told us to "show not tell". Yeah, John never said, "and Jesus, the one whom John loved to freaking death", his use of tone and diction demonstrated clearly clearly clearly his absolute delight in the person of Jesus.

His gospel didn't have a "point." It felt as though he wrote just because he wanted desperately for someone to "get it."
The tone John wrote was the same one in which I would have written about or spoken about my best friends, with that distant look in my eye as I looked back to that day in October Haley and I kidnapped and adopted into our friendship the third point to the trifecta, Caity, that slight catch in my voice as I tell others about the day I met Kira and truly saw the joy of Christ for the first time, those elaborate hand motions I use when bringing up Abby and our mutual love for communication and personality tests.

Haley, the seventh grade social studies teacher in Colorado.
Caity, the RUF intern in Oklahoma.
Kira, the photographer in Texas.
Abby, the law student in DC.

They've got titles, but ain't nobody know them like I know them. My stories would differ from every other person.

I bet you John felt really similarly.
Jesus, the risen Lord.
But, to John, Jesus, the man, his best friend, the one whom he could write of all day long, tell every story and yet, if he did, "even the whole world would not have enough room for the books that would be written",

I have long loved Jesus the Lord. But I have just fallen into love with Jesus, the man.