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Detecting Christmas December 7 Devotional

by David Joynt on December 07, 2023


ECCLESIASTES 3:1 | 1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

 

PSALM 27:14 | 14 Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!

 

God is also active in what we sometimes call “secular history.” The perfect timing of Jesus’ birth is shown in the necessary factors present at the time of his arrival. Two of these factors are roads and peace. Our world is a place of perpetual conflicts, and wars prevent people traveling and connecting and sharing. In the first century, for the first time, there was an extended period of relative peace and stability, the Pax Romana. Further, this peace rested on the capacity of Rome to project military power across its empire to keep numerically superior peoples pacified and subject to its authority. This required roads that armies could march on to respond quickly to uprising and rebellions. The peace and the roads made it possible for the gospel to spread, as evangelists moved around to plant new communities of faith. The first great road system and lasting peace were critical in the development of the church.

 

Pray for peace in our world and the spread of the gospel.

 

 

Gracious God,

We have a great capacity to communicate, even without travel. Help us to speak truth in winning and personal ways. 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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