More Than a Voice on the Phone

For two years, six-year-old Emma Reyes knew her father only as a voice on a satellite phone. Staff Sergeant David Reyes had deployed to Afghanistan before Emma could form lasting memories of his face. She heard his voice every Thursday evening — warm, steady, full of promises that he loved her and would come home. She drew crayon pictures of him from photographs, but the man in those pictures felt as far away as a character in a storybook.

Then came a December morning at the base gymnasium. Emma stood with dozens of other families, clutching her mother's hand, when the doors opened and the soldiers filed in. She didn't recognize him at first. But when David knelt on the cold tile floor and said, "Emmy, it's Daddy," she knew the voice — the same voice from every Thursday call — and now it had arms that lifted her off the ground, a chest that shook with tears, a rough cheek pressed against hers.

The voice had become flesh.

John tells us something staggering happened on a cosmic scale. The Word who was with God, who was God, who spoke galaxies into existence — that Word put on skin and moved into the neighborhood. The Almighty didn't send another message. He came Himself. And like Emma discovering that her father's voice now had a face and hands, we were given the chance to behold His glory — not from a distance, but up close, full of grace and truth.