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Detecting Christmas December 25 Devotional

by David Joynt on December 25, 2023


1 john 1:2 | 2  this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us —

 

Why did Christmas happen the way it did? So the distant and divine could come near and be accessible. It is hard to measure the distance between God’s life and ours. Morally it is the distance between perfection and imperfection, righteousness and unrighteousness. Intellectually it is the distance between unlimited and limited knowledge, omniscience and ignorance. Ontologically it is the distance between Creator and creature, complete independence and utter dependence. Chronologically it is the distance between the eternal and the temporary, between the enduring and the ephemeral. Aesthetically it is the distance between the glorious and the tawdry, the incandescent and the dark. Yet at Christmas God closed the distances and came among us.

 

Which distance seems farthest to you?

 

 

Gracious God,

Thank you for overcoming the many distances — for entering into our limited, dependent, unrighteous, temporary, and tawdry world. You’ve shown us a glimpse of the good and the glorious! Amen.

 

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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