The Meaning of God



 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'") From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.
-- John 1:1-18


You wish it could be put into words and paragraphs
recited and parsed and memorized and philosophized
offset printed in a leather-bound book that could
be closed and shelved and dusted for good company

But Logos, Sophia, meaning, divine reason
come to us through the cosmic entanglement
of body and God, a delicate spatial connection
with birth pangs and dying pains and all

the light and love you can squeeze in between
so that the meaning of God if there ever could
be such a thing for us to comprehend is known
in the one who spirit-charged like the incarnate one

lives in created flesh and blood and heart and mind
suffers mercy without explanation or cause
births hope without limits or permission
delights in life for all its holy bodily humanity

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