Monday Devotional: July 11, 2022

Scripture: Colossians 1:15-28

As I write this, we are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our world has changed before our eyes, uncertainty is in the air, divisiveness abounds, and hope is becoming harder to find. Where is the good news that we so desperately need?

Jesus came for such a time like this!

God came into the messiness of our lives and our world. God showed us that all things will be reconciled in the end. God reminded us of God’s creative power from the beginning of time to today. God reached out to us so that we could see God’s face in our humanity and remember a world that seems dismembered.

It turns out that suffering, struggle, and pain are part of what it means to be human in this broken world. This brokenness becomes a recognition of our desperate need for healing, completion, and salvation. God’s coming in Jesus shows us that God is willing to enter into our messiness, into our suffering, alienation, and pain in order to restore, renew, and reconcile us.

Though God has not caused our suffering, God redeems it, transforms it, and recreates it so that we can become more like Jesus — more filled with hope, more able to be agents of God’s reconciling power, no matter what season we are in, no matter what season the world is in.

I am not sure where we will be when you read this. I am not sure what might come a week from now as I write this. I do know that the God who created all things is with us; I do know that God gets it; I do know that we have seen God’s face in Jesus. For this is a God who becomes one of us and takes up our struggles and sufferings. That’s good news indeed!

Prayer

Creator God, help us see you in the faces of those I encounter who live with suffering, pain, and uncertainty. Amen.

By Juan Carlos Huertas, Upper Room Disciplines 2022, p. 237.