Advent Devotional, Dec. 10: “The Someones” by Jennifer Garrison Brownell

In the grocery line, a magazine cover catches my eye. Someone Beautiful is leaving Someone Glamorous to begin a relationship with Someone Powerful. I have not heard of any of these Someones, although they are all evidently interesting and important enough to warrant news coverage.

Sometimes it worries me not to know the backstories of those magazine cover Someones, and so from time to time I buy a magazine or two on my way out of the store.

“I have to know what’s going on  in the world,” I explain in my defense, “in order to stay relevant in the pulpit.”

My explanation sounds flimsy, even to me. I am pretty sure that Karl Barth was not talking about the glossy magazines at check-out stands when he advised preachers to hold the Bible in one hand and the news in the other.

Anyway, there’s no way to keep up. Tomorrow, today’s Powerful, Glamorous or Beautiful Someone will be replaced by Someone Else.

That’s why it’s Good News that we don’t have to keep track of the rich and famous—the Herods and Lysaniases and Caiaphases of the world. The word of God does not rest there. Instead, we are to look for the word of God where we least expect it, with whom it seems the least likely to appear. Because if the word of God can come to John—roughly clad, honey stuck to his beard, shouting on a river bank—who knows who might be next?

God of the humble and poor, we are so easily distracted by the wealthy and famous. Give us the wisdom to seek Your face, instead, where we least expect it. 

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United Church of Christ Stillspeaking Devotional Published by Pilgrim Press. Shared with permission of the publisher.