Now this is eternal life — that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent.
John 17:3 (NET)
Eternal Life Is Knowing Him
The bistro keeps one small table against the window, and after six most nights the same man has it. He orders without opening the menu, eats about half of what comes, and stays a long while past the point where the food is the reason he’s there. He isn’t waiting for anyone. His wife’s brother calls on Sundays to ask how he’s doing, and he says fine, and the two of them have let it stand that way all year.
The Father had put all people under his authority so that he could give eternal life to everyone the Father had given him. Jesus said that while he was praying, and the life he gives is a knowing: the Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom the Father sent. The sending was the Father’s own doing.
You can learn true things about God in an afternoon and go home unchanged, and plenty of people have. Knowing him takes what knowing a person takes, hours that accomplish nothing in particular and the patience to come back to them tomorrow. The life he gives is that kind of knowing. He said it to his Father, over the people he’d been given, and he told his Father that the work he was given to do was finished.
At the window the man has been working on the same half of a plate for the better part of an hour. The dining room has thinned out and a busser is turning chairs up on the far tables. When the server finally comes for the plate he asks for the dessert menu instead, and he has never once taken the dessert menu, and he reads the whole thing before he picks.
A Prayer to Remember
Father, you sent your Son, and the life he came to give turns out to be knowing you. Thank you for opening that up to people who have nothing to bring to it. There will be nothing much to report tomorrow night either, and that turns out to be the thing itself.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
