From a minor prophet, it is a challenge fit even at Christmastime
By Dean Collins
It is a strange text to consider during Advent, or is it? As I near the end of the year, my Bible-reading plan includes the minor prophets. If you are a baseball fan you probably think of the minors as teams filled with players who aren’t quite good enough to play in the big leagues. In Scripture we have books called the major prophets and some referred to as the minor prophets. The big boys are pretty familiar; Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel may be the first names that come to mind.
Minor prophets, major message
Of course, there were other big names you may also remember when you consider their prophetic role. Joshua and Samuel would be likely choices. But the minor prophets are not insignificant. They are minor mostly because they are smaller books. In this Advent season I just finished reading the book of Joel. It contains just three chapters that read more like a horror script than a Christmas carol. The reader is told to tell this story even to the children. Here is a sample from chapter 1:4:
“What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.”
Joel doesn't seem like bedtime Christmas reading. But Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol also can be a little intense for children as ghosts reveal very unkind actions by Ebenezer Scrooge. And maybe both the prophet Joel and Charles Dickens were getting to the same need we all have, namely that of repentance.
Daily challenge, even at Christmastime
Those familiar with the church calendar might think repentance should be reserved for the season of Lent rather than a topic at Christmas. Christmas is more a celebration of a birth after all. Here we are, eating figgy pudding and Joel is telling us to fast and weep over our sins!
But surely we are aware of our daily need to repent. Unless you are reading this looking down from Heaven, then I suspect you, like me, have managed to sin in some way and to fall short of the glory of God in something you have done or thought recently. But Joel also reminds us that God is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. It is the great love and mercy of God that resulted in the gift of his Son who ultimately came to die so we might be forgiven and have full and abundant life.
The apostle Paul, who also called us to repentance, reminds us in Romans 2 that it is God’s kindness that leads us to repent of our sins.
Jude tells us that because Jesus is our Lord and King, he can keep us from stumbling and present us whole and blameless before God.
First repentance, and then celebration
Reading Joel reminds me that as we wait to celebrate the birth of Jesus and his eventual return, we daily experience the kindness of God. What better time to admit that we fail in our actions and attitudes both with our possessions and with the people around us. Christmas is, in fact, a good time to repent and then to celebrate the kindness of God that sent us Jesus our Savior and king.
Verse 4 of “O Little Town of Bethlehem “ summarizes well how we can and should approach God as we wait for his return:
O holy Child of Bethlehem,
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin and enter in;
be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels,
the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
our Lord Emmanuel!
Your time with God’s Word
Joel 2:12-13, Romans 2:1-5, Jude 1:24-25 ESV
Paolo Cordoni photo at istockphoto.com
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