in the beginning

One of the early friends of Jesus said that "in the beginning .. he was with God."

The guy was writing Greek, of course, not English, but that's how it's mostly translated. I'm no great expert on Greek, but I did do some at school, and it's always struck me as slightly odd that that's the translation given.

Because the word in the Greek actually means 'towards' (sometimes even 'against') more than 'with'. (You don't need to know a huge amount of Greek to figure that out).

But I appreciate that "He was towards God" maybe doesn't sound too good.

The sense of it, though, is that he was 'with' in the sense of being 'face to face with' God. Looking towards God. Eye-to-eye sort of thing.

Relational, in other words.

I've been thinking of that quite a bit today since the bulk of my day has been eyeball-to-eyeball encounters. Being 'towards' people. Face to face, relational encounters.

Like the man who's been doing our computer stuff, fixing (or re-creating) our database.

He was in today. There are times when we mainly communicate through e-mails back and forth. Which is helpful. But not the same.

He was in today, as I say, and so it was face to face. It's always good to see him and when, like today, there's the chance to work things through and toss things around when the man is there in front of you and it's all of it face-to-face - well, you really get things done.

It took a bit of time - because face-to-face relationships always do: but things get done.

It was like that, too, over lunch and beyond. In fact it was nearer 3pm by the time the lunchtime talk was done. Face-to-face, around the table, coffee and food to hand. And such a help to be able to talk like that and work things through.

That's the sort of thing the guy was on about in saying of Jesus that in the beginning, or from the start, he "was with God". Face-to-face with him, around the lunch-time table. That sort of thing.

The way I think it's meant to be.

So a fair bit of the time today as well I've been giving thought to the 'meeting' we held tonight. I say 'meeting' like that because, as I've said before, it's one of those 'meetings' where we don't necessarily 'meet' in any real relational way at all.

We're 'with' each other in the sense that we're in the same room as each other. But not really 'towards' each other in the face-to-face, relational sort of way.

I wanted to try and make it much more a face-to-face sort of time. As I say, I think that's how it's meant to be.

Because if Jesus himself is anything to go by, it can be both highly creative and also extremely productive to be face-to-face like that.

So the first hour of our meeting here at night (it was a meeting of the leaders here, 40 or more of them there) we spent together in worship. Celebrating the sacrament. Around the table, quite literally (we had a circular table in the middle of the room).

Meeting with the Lord. Trying to get ourselves face-to-face with him.

And with each other. So we split into smaller groups for that. Served tea and coffee and water for all who wished. And gave them the chance to talk.

I wanted the thing to be a time when we got face-to-face. Relational more than anything else.

Because I'm not sure we're all that good at that. And we need to be.

That's where it all begins. "With" God and "with" each other, too. Face-to-face and relational.