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Christmas at the Movies: Week 1, Day 6

by David Joynt on December 08, 2017


 

Jeremiah 5:23-28 | Hosea 4:1-3

The prophets are a great antidote to our penchant for confusing
the blessings of this life with the final form of the Kingdom.
They draw our eyes toward brokenness and struggle, they tune
our hearts to violence and selfishness and greed. They prevent us
from retreating into our own spheres of pleasant distraction and
relative comfort. They speak, in tones of divine anger and
sorrow, on behalf of the victims and the refugees and the
suffering. They comfort the afflicted and they afflict the
comfortable. The prophets resist the untruth that we can focus on
our own welfare and safely ignore the plight of others.

 

 

Read our passages for today. How do they express God's
dissatisfaction with human life?

 

 

What most disturbs you about life in the US?

 

 

What global problem breaks your heart?

 

 

What are you doing to impact these issues?

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: hearts

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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