Witness

If you watched the Cleveland Cavaliers during the NBA playoffs, you will know what I’m talking about. First I saw the handwritten sign: “We are witnesses to this.” And then, during the final game against the Pistons to win their spot in the finals, I saw the professionally produced signs people held with just that one word: Witness.

I don’t know how these signs got started, but I understand what they meant. Almost nobody thought that the Cavs would do so well this year. And while everyone knows that LeBron James is a phenomenal player, his performance at the end of game 5 in the Eastern Conference Finals seemed, to basketball fans, miraculous. And so the signs go up: witness. We saw it. We were a part of it.

The word witness is powerful. It’s meaning is bigger than the idea of witnesses in a courtroom. It goes back to words of the New Testament. The people in the early church who wrote about Jesus used that word: witness. We were witnesses to these things. We saw it. We were a part of it.

Being a witness begins with being a part of a powerful, spiritual experience. It begins with the experience of God. You witness God in your life, and you share about that experience. The signs from the basketball games were in my mind in early June as the church gave its blessing to the high school graduates. Two of them spoke on behalf of their class, and they spoke as witnesses. They stood at the pulpit and told the congregation about their experiences of God. Of all the things that were said, one is sticking in my mind. Nate Rango had been thanking the congregation for the support and nurture that he has received and he said to all of us “we are paying attention.”

Sometimes it doesn’t seem as if people are paying attention to us, whether they are teenagers, children, or adults. But we have a witness who says otherwise. People are paying attention. They see. They are a part of it.