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Advent Devotional for Wednesday, December 24
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
This is a puzzling text for Christmas Eve. It contains no explicit mention of Christ, no allusion to prophecy or anticipation of the Day of the Lord. Instead, the reading waxes philosophical, ruminating on time and the varied seasons, travails and joys within time. Why read such a text on the cusp of the Savior’s birth?
We read it to be reminded that Jesus Christ entered our time, our history and was subject to the time that we experience: entering the world as a vulnerable infant, growing, as Luke expresses it, “in wisdom and years,” experiencing rejection and affirmation, eventually dying at the hands of a powerful Empire. The time that Jesus entered—distant as it now is from us—was remarkably like our own. A powerful nation exerted its economic and military domination throughout much of the known world; culture and custom more often set people against one another than united them; as poverty extended its insidious grasp, many awaited a better life and a more humane time. Yet this Jesus who entered our time is also the Lord of all time, the foundation of the world, the alpha and omega, the fulfillment of God’s covenant with humanity, the One who makes all things new.
In his letter from Birmingham City Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. writes to white clergy who had encouraged King to wait patiently because the time for equality was not yet ripe. King responds to this advice by reminding these pastors that time is not neutral. It can be used to build up or to tear down, to enslave or to free. Jesus Christ enters our time to show us the Way beyond the violence, hatred, and division that wracks us over time. He enters our time to proclaim that this new time is now.
Holy God, on this day we give thanks that your Son entered time as subject and Lord. We know there is nothing that we experience in time that Christ has not taken as his own. Show us the ways that reflect his life during the time that we have. Amen.
David H. Jensen
Academic Dean and Professor in the Clarence N. and Betty B. Frierson Distinguished Chair of Reformed Theology
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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