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Advent Devotional for Saturday, December 11
One night as I was working on my computer, my three-year-old daughter was trying to tell me something. I confess she did not have my full and undivided attention: I attempted to respond to her while continuing to type.
Finally she said with impatient exasperation: “But Daddy you’re not listening to me!” Still typing, I replied: “But I am listening.”
When she retorted: “But Daddy, you’re not listening with your eyes!” my heart melted. I turned off the computer and gazed in her eyes. My young daughter intuitively knew and named the difference between hearing and listening.
Today’s text is about the difference between seeing and recognizing. Or maybe, better said—it is about not seeing. Jesus weeps bitterly over Jerusalem because, although the people “see” him, their spiritual blindness prevents them from recognizing him. This very blindness prompted Jesus to lament, back in Luke 13:34, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!”
Jesus is so deeply wounded in his spirit because he could never really get Jerusalem’s full and undivided attention. Not even his divine birth, nor his crucifixion or resurrection could do that.
The words that haunt me the most are: “you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” They haunt me because I wonder how many times we have all also failed to recognize the risen Christ in our midst.
Advent is where we recognize afresh God’s visitation in the person of the Christ-child, while thanking God for the times, however sporadic, when we can say, “once we were blind but now we see.”
Eternal God, grant us spiritual vision that we might see and embrace the wonders of your divine visitation all around us. Remove from us anything that keeps us from seeing the world through your loving eyes. Illuminate our path with your divine Light, that we might see the way more clearly. Amen.
David Jones
Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program
For the glory of God and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is a seminary in the Presbyterian-Reformed tradition whose mission is to educate and equip individuals for the ordained Christian ministry and other forms of Christian service and leadership; to employ its resources in the service of the church; to promote and engage in critical theological thought and research; and to be a winsome and exemplary community of God's people.
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