The words of John 3:16 are deep in me. I have no memory of learning them and can go years without reading or reciting them, and yet, in a moment, they are in my breath and on my lips, rising from that deep place: “For God so loved the world.”
I remember hearing this verse in my mother’s voice as we practiced memory verses after church. My mother carries her faith like a mantle. She has, at times, carried my faith as well, praying when I could not, confessing when I would not, whispering the promise of God’s love when I could not see, hear, or feel that promise myself.
John 3:16 came of age, as I did, in the American evangelicalism of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. The verse played a quiet role in the global church until the Second Great Awakening in the United States, and it was not until the evangelical wave of the late 20th century that it became the singular words of the gospel in American life. Billy Graham recited the verse at crusades attended by thousands, who were often gifted copies of John’s Gospel. Sports fans were broadcast across the United States wearing shirts and carrying signs to games emblazoned simply with “John 3:16.” This is the John 3:16 I inherited, the celebrity verse that roared through American stadiums—football games and revivals alike—and the quiet verse whispered by my mother in my childhood bedroom with the paper doll wallpaper.
