In 2021 the US Congress passed the longest law ever presented to this legislative body. The Consolidated Appropriations Act was a 1.4 trillion dollar bill containing 5,593 pages. Its primary purpose was coronavirus relief, among other provisions.
By comparison, the United States Constitution is a whopping FOUR PAGES in length. The Gettysburg Address, the speech by President Abraham Lincoln at the occasion of the memorial of the Battle of Gettysburg of the Civil War, was a grand total of 272 words.
Brevity was also the subject of many pointed quotes by some of history’s most proliferative writers and politicians. Thomas Jefferson’s quote in the title of this reflection is an example of many similar observations:
“I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.” ― Truman Capote
“You know you’re writing well when you’re throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.” — Ernest Hemingway
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” — Mark Twain
In other words, throwing words at a paper does not always convey your message in the best light. Being succinct can garner much attention and adoration. Cliff Notes tend to have more readers than the Encyclopedia Britannica. Now that is not to say that relevant information should be left out of a piece of writing. Facts are clearly important but facts can easily get lost in the forest of verbosity. Get to the point. Summarize effectively. Keep it compact. Be careful to be crisp. Be concise in all important matters. Make you point in a compact…well, I think you get the idea. No need to drone on.
This lesson was apparently not wasted on the disciple which Jesus loved. That would be John the evangelist. At least most scholars believe this to be the case. John wrote the Gospel bearing his name, three letters and the book of Revelation. In his Gospel he took 21 chapters to present to us the key elements of the life of Jesus. He gets right to the point at the beginning of the book professing Jesus as the incarnate Word of God. He describes the calling of the apostles. The signs of Jesus during His three year ministry. And Jesus’ passion and resurrection. There is nothing in here that is not needed for the reader to understand and accept that Jesus is the Messiah.
But it is the next to the last verse (verse 24) of the last chapter (chapter 21) that John sums things up. He states:
It is this disciple who testifies to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true.
He tells us that we can have faith and believe what John has written about Jesus and that He is the one that Israel has been waiting for…the Messiah. Simple and straight forward. But he then in the last verse of his Gospel, John tells us, in his own way, what Truman Capote and Hemingway were saying. Less is more!
“There are also many other things that Jesus did,
but if these were to be described individually,
I do not think the whole world would contain the books
that would be written.” (John 21:25)
While there are many more things John could have put in his Gospel, they simply were not needed. For the believer a shorter Gospel would have been sufficient. For the non-believer more would still not be enough. What John has presented in the span of his 21 Chapters could leave little doubt that Jesus was the expected one. The Holy One of God. The Lamb of God. The New Adam. The New Moses. Son of God, King of Israel. The Son of…OK, there I go again. Where is that backspace key?
