Emphasis Preaching Journal

The high school’s open house hustled us parents through an evening’s abbreviated schedule of what our children navigated daily. I did okay with a brief shot of US history and didn’t have enough time to flunk math; but, my daughter’s chemistry teacher threw a question: “How many states of matter are there?” I said, “Three.” The correct answer was, “Four.” “What? Solid, liquid, gas. We learned that in fourth grade.” “Well,” the teacher said, “make space in your mind for a fourth: Plasma.” For me this was a greater change than finding another planet in the solar system. It was like the leap from riding horseback to space flight. So with Nicodemus. Jesus teaches his abbreviated night class, acquainting Nicodemus with something beyond what he’d learned in school. For Nicodemus it’s greater than the realization that there are four states of matter instead of three. He’s being touched, challenged, and summoned to make room in his life for a fourth dimension.