The following meditation was written by Dr. Greg Rapier for Dr. Doug Hood’s upcoming book, A Month of Prayer & Gratitude: Five-Minute Meditations for a Deeper Experience of Gratitude.
“Jesus did many other things as well. If all of them were recorded, I imagine the world itself wouldn’t have enough room for the scrolls that would be written.”
John 21:25 (Common English Bible)
In elementary school, I had a friend named Clay who bragged that he had the best backyard in the world. He claimed to have two basketball courts, a soccer field, and a playground—all in his backyard. One day, Clay invited me to his house. We walked there after school, and I remember, upon entering, racing toward his backyard.
I rushed outside, looked around, and felt incredibly disappointed. A couple of trees, a barbeque, a football . . . but not much else. The whole yard was smaller than one basketball court—let alone two. Let alone a soccer field. And a playground? Forget about it.
I told Clay his backyard wasn’t big. And it wasn’t special.
Clay calmly picked his football off the grass and chucked it over the fence. Then he began to climb. “Come on,” he said. But I was afraid. I’d never climbed a fence before, and I was scared. Slowly, I began to climb. Just a step or two, enough to peek over the top. And sure enough, next to his football, on the opposite side of the fence, there were two basketball courts, a soccer field, and a playground.
Turns out Clay shared a fence with our elementary school. And that great big backyard that he often spoke of was right there all along.
John 21:25 reminds us that the Bible—for all its value and beauty—is a limited tool and that the verses of Scripture can’t possibly capture the totality of who God is. This verse, the final of John’s gospel, doesn’t seal God’s story shut but rather allows it to unfurl, to open up and bloom like a flower. It reminds us that God is alive and vibrant, even outside of Scripture. It invites us to see past the fences we construct—the fence of church, the fence of Scripture, the fence of scarcity and limited resources—to see past the small-minded lies we tell ourselves about a limited God in a scarce and Godless world, and to imagine a God of abundance. The Scripture calls us to get rid of a boxed-in God and instead, step across the fence into God’s great big backyard, an open space full of wonder, mystery, and abundance, where God’s story is still being written today. And where every new discovery is a reason for gratitude.
Joy,
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