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Detecting Christmas November 28 Devotional

by David Joynt on November 28, 2023


MATTHEW 1:2 | 2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,

 

“How odd of God to choose the Jews.”  William Norman Ewer

 

God accomplishes his universal purposes through particular individuals. He started in a concrete way with a single retired couple, Abraham and Sarah. From this single childless pair, God brought forth a nation. This decision can feel unfair, not somehow respectful of the world’s cultural and human diversity. But truth excludes errors, as light does darkness. If God wanted to come alongside his creatures he had to focus somewhere. Knowledge of this will and ways had to become known among some group before it could be widely disseminated. From Judaism came Jesus, whose teaching and truth have generated the world’s only truly multicultural multinational movement. The unlikelihood of God choosing an obscure Bedouin tribe in the Ancient Near East pales beside his decision to choose anyone anywhere. The particular, in history, is not the enemy of the universal.

 

The scandal of particularity is a necessary one. Do you agree?

 

 

Gracious God,

We also cannot demonstrate your universal love without embracing particular people. Give us the courage to be concrete. 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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