Devotional Advent Part 3

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (NIV)

Earlier in our marriage my wife Camie spent a number of years as an elementary school teacher. It seemed like every year she would have at least one child in her class who struggled to pay attention. At the end of the day, when I would ask, “Well, did so-and-so pay attention today?” And she would almost always say, “No, unfortunately, that student did not pay attention very well today.”

Now we often talk about people not paying attention but that’s not really what’s going on. The fact of the matter is that they’re paying attention alright – they’re just paying attention to something else. The problem, in other words, is that they’re paying attention to the wrong things.

It’s not just school kids: I think we all struggle with this. I admit it, there are days, when I sit down with my wife after a long day at work, and rather than engaging the love of my life in conversation, some strange force of the flesh possesses me to pull out my smartphone and start scrolling through the news of the day or watch some ridiculous video. And so I end up paying more attention to my phone than to the glorious work that God is doing in my wife’s life.

Or sometimes in the morning, with the Bible open in my lap as I’m poised to get into the Word of God, I just let my mind wander aimlessly, as it pays attention to this fleeting thought or to that passing care. You see, rather than honoring the God of glory, I give more honor to my mental chore list.

If you sometimes struggle the way I sometimes struggle, I want you to hear what John the Gospel-writer says. He says this: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (NIV).

In the world of first-century Judaism, the term glory (the Greek is doxa) had two aspects. In the first place, doxa was closely associated with the presence of God, and when God was present, well, you knew it – it captivated your attention. In the second place, doxa bears the sense of high reputation or social worth. For Greek-speaking Jews, people who have doxa are people worthy of our honor: they’re worth paying attention to.

When Jesus came into the world two thousand years ago, he was born with an inherent glory, a built-in doxa. As the doxa of the “one and only” or “only begotten” Son, this doxa is a distinctively divine glory that the Son shares co-eternally with the Father. Yet this doxa was no abstract divine quality. Rather this was a concrete glory, tangible in everything that Jesus said and did. The glory which John and the apostles saw was the glory of God uniquely refracted through Jesus’ flesh. In revealing his glory through his life, Jesus captivated the attention of the apostles; he was worth paying attention to.

If you’re struggling to focus on God these days, if Jesus is failing to catch your attention lately, then maybe you need to take a time out and expose yourself to a fresh dose of revealed glory. If that’s the case, I encourage you to invite Jesus to reveal himself afresh through the pages of scripture and the person of the Spirit.

“Yea, Lord, we greet thee, born this happy morning;
Jesus, to thee be glory given!
Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing!
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.”

Amen!