What exactly does a "witness" do?

What do you do when you're inching your way through morning peak hour traffic?

While jamming our way through to my son's school one morning, our conversation topic turned to the question: "What exactly does a witness do?" 

"Witness" is a not a new word to my son; and yet, as it turned out, he never really understood what it means. He made several guesses: "Someone who tells us what we should do", "Someone who tells us about God", "when you teach someone about the law", plus several more. He could even tell me some Bible references that mention the word, but he couldn't quite work out what it actually means.

When I eventually tried to explain to him what a "witness" is about - not really what you can do for others, but simply knowing first-hand what has happened to you, being certain and truthful about what you saw and/or experience in person - I was very surprised at how he struggled to understand.

For some reason, he can't quite grasp the idea that a witness is not the one doing the action. One becomes a witness by simply being there!

It is noteworthy that the Lord Jesus chooses this word, "witness", to summarise the primary task of his apostles: 

" ... you will be my witnesses ..." (Acts 1:8).

Our natural tendencies are to be caught up with all sorts of things we think we can do to further God's cause. But Jesus declares to us that God's grand plan will be primarily accomplished not through what his people can do for him, but through his people bearing witness to what he has done!

The apostle Paul could summarise his life's work with just a few words:

"the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace" (Acts 20:24) 

May the Lord who has given us the full measure of his Spirit help us to be likewise.