Devotional for the week of January 3rd, 2020
There are many questions today about facts. Who do we trust to give us the facts? What sources and individuals are reliable? Social media can be a great tool for sharing, but it has also become a means of spreading misinformation, false beliefs, and bad advice. Many people today are suspicious of what some claim to be the facts.
Even if we have the right facts, we might not have something more important: the truth. Facts can be a partial representation of the truth. Facts might tell us that it is sunny and warm this morning, but the weather forecast might say thunderstorms are coming in the afternoon. The latter statement is truth. Truth is the larger reality that smaller facts don’t capture, and sometimes contradict.
John tells us that Jesus is God’s Word, full of grace and truth. In Jesus we get the full truth of God, not merely the facts. What are the facts we might see? We are all sinful and have strayed from God’s just and loving ways. The world is a mess. Left to our own ways, we are surely lost. These are the facts, as if we woke up to a dangerous thunderstorm but don’t know what the weather forecast is after that. Jesus is the fuller truth that in spite of the stormy mess of the world and our individual lives, God’s grace is a gift to us in Christ. There is a blue sky and a safe calm that is ours through divine love.
Some of us live with messages that tell us we are not the right kind of person to receive God’s grace because of our past mistakes, or ethnicity, or gender identity, or level of education, or poverty. The truth of Jesus Christ tells us we are children of God. “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (John 1:16). This is the truth that gives us life.
Devotional message and art based on the readings for January 3rd, reprinted from sundaysandseasons.com.
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