Daily Devotionals

Devotional: December 1st

For Reading and Meditation:
     1 Timothy 3:1-16

Max Muller, a writer on religious issues, once made this arresting statement: "You do not know the worth of your Christian faith until you have compared it to others." The first article of belief we look at is the fact that God has appeared in this world in the Person of His eternal Son. Our faith is not the word of a prophet but, as we saw yesterday, the Word of the Son Himself. No other world faith even attempts to represent its great teacher as God incarnate. Yet we claim for Christ just that. As God, He comes to us from the highest, and He comes all the way. I remember hearing a missionary to India say that he was forced to rethink his faith in the light of other faiths and other ways of life. "All the old shibboleths and modes of expression and accepted outlooks on life are challenged," he said, "and one begins to see where the relevant lies." He started discussions with Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim leaders, as well as representatives of India's many other religions. The gatherings were called "Round Table" discussions to suggest that everyone could present what they considered to be the distinctives of their faith. One could see scintillations of truth, the missionary recalled, as people spoke from experience or from their sacred books. But whenever a Christian spoke and unfolded the truth of the Incarnation, the meeting would lapse into silence. Sometimes the silence would last for many minutes, only to be broken with the remark: "We have nothing in our faith that compares to that. Nothing!"

Dear God and Father, if You hadn't come down to us, how could we have ever come up to You? What humiliation this must have meant for You. Yet what love. Our hearts sing with gratitude. Blessed be Your Name forever. Amen.

Copyright Statement