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Advent Devotional for Tuesday, December 14
Is not calamity for the unrighteous?
I offer the testimony of last Christmas. A man who has a lifetime of seeking God asked this very question of me. He memorized many sections of Job out of necessity to coexist with his angry circumstances. Why would God abandon Job, and why would God abandon him? This man mocked Christmas, and said the chestnuts roasting on an open fire were his very life and livelihood. He felt God’s contempt and silence. I didn’t answer him.
Job is a snapshot of three lives, it seems: prosperity, devastation, and finally, when all seems lost, there’s rejuvenation — re-formed and re-newed life. Which Job, then, will we encounter this day? Christmas, with high expectations, seems to intensify the emotion of what is missing or wrong. In this case, I was listening to someone with mental illness and who depended on the church for most of his friendships and some of his handouts.
I had nothing to give but Job 42:2, “I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” He repeated it his way, “God does pretty much what God wants.” He thought by talking. Eventually he offered his own Job-like blessing: The Lord is in control, and yes, there’s hope of God’s presence even now. He had the conviction of things hoped for.
We prayed Job’s words and his words of anger and hope. He desperately finished with “on earth as it is in heaven.”
God is about rejuvenation. And so this Christmas, when we’re seated next to that persnickety aunt who smells of smoke and bourbon and pinches our fat, complaining of her failed friendships, or when we’re listening to the mourning of a mother grieving the death of a child, let us pray, sometimes silently, a Job-like prayer for tender mercies and rejuvenation.
Lord, rejuvenate us in body and spirit, make us whole in word and deed. Be in control of our life and our eternity through Christ. Amen.
Scott Campbell (MDiv’04)
Pastor, Grace Presbyterian Church, Lubbock, Texas
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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