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Advent Devotional for Wednesday, December 15
Use it or lose it,” we often hear. Each person brings to the world unique gifts and graces that only he or she can contribute to their generation. In fact, most people have so many gifts they cannot develop them all. As children grow into adulthood, some gifts are selected and honed, while others fall by the wayside, unrealized potentials in a profligate gene pool of possibility.
But what about gifts, given by the creator, that come to be used in diabolical ways? One person has a gift for leadership, able to articulate vision and persuade followers — but what if this gift is used to feed greed or glory rather than the community’s good? What if the gift of persuasion is used to deceive? What if a gift of intelligence serves to design not more effective infrastructures but more effective weapons? What if poets write lies or managers abuse their employees?
According to this passage, leaders who use their God-given gifts in pretense, ignoring the source of their talents, presuming to be self-made or perhaps paying only lip service to God, will lose what they thought they had gained. God-given wisdom used in harmful ways will shrivel and perish. Discernment will flee. Seeing turns blind; reading is blocked; the soul slumbers.
What is not good news to leadership presuming to go its own way is very good news to those subject to their influence. God will not allow the abuse of power to continue unchecked. When scoffers are no more, when tyranny ceases, the deaf will hear and the blind will see, the poor and needy will rejoice in God. The desert will be fruitful again. Watch, pray, work, speak, and wait — it will happen.
God, we wait for you. Awaken in us gratitude, praise, and devotion. Awaken our discernment to use our gifts generously. Bring soon the day of hearing and sight, of justice and mercy, of renewal and rejoicing. May we welcome that advent with all we say and do. Amen.
Patricia K. Tull (MDiv’85)
Professor of Hebrew Bible, Louisville Presbyterian Seminary
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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