December 17: Prophet of the Most High
♫ Music:
Day 20 - Friday, December 17
Title: PROPHET OF THE MOST HIGH
Scripture: Luke 1:76-78,13-17
“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest; for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways, to give knowledge of salvation to His people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God, with which the Dayspring from on high has visited us.”
You shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
Poetry:
In a Dark Time
by Theodore Roethke
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
LONG-EXPECTED WONDER IN THE FACE OF A CHILD
We don’t give kids the credit they deserve. They’re smarter than we realize, more capable of complexity than we allow. Funny how they read us, often better than we read ourselves. G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis each found ways to call readers to child-like wonder—long into adulthood—at the immensity of God in the world; oh, what we can learn from that raw, disarming candor children have. Train them to dive into the deep pools of life-learning and some children, from earliest years, give hints of what they will be.
I know because I have five grandchildren. And I watch Steve Harvey when I’m waiting in the barber shop.
Steve Harvey, in 2019, put together a collection of the top three interviews he’d done with kids on his show. First among them was Ariana—a rosy-cheeked six-year-old who skipped on stage in a pink dress with a pink bow in her hair. Asked what she’d been up to since she’d last been on the show, she told Harvey she’d written a book, written a song, and launched a product line. Okay, so she was probably selected out of hundreds of applicants (whose Mom or Dad, or both, crafted the proposal). But little Ariana was, nonetheless, six years old with the on-air poise of someone four times her age. Perched on that big studio chair, she was a picture of the future.
Today’s Scripture brings us Zechariah, who had questioned God’s ability to give him and his aged wife a child. We hear him speak into the life of this miraculous infant, perhaps gazing with wonder into that tiny face. Zechariah told this baby—can an infant remember—that he would become an Old Testament-style proclaimer of the coming Messiah. Months earlier, Zechariah had heard an angel tell him that. But Zechariah had doubted it. (Something about doubt would become a hidden thread in the story of this boy.)
Years later, Jesus, in an account recorded by Matthew, would say “among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater,” though John had sent him a message from prison voicing uncertainty about Jesus’ role as Savior of the world (Matt. 11:2-14).
Doubt later in life did not deter John from his mission—one rising out of relationship with Jesus before either had emerged from their mothers’ wombs. John had leaped inside his mother at the very approach of Jesus inside Mary. The Holy Spirit was part of that moment (Luke 1:39-44), as was the moment John later baptized this Savior (Matt. 3:16).
The artwork depicting John, and Jeremy Riddle’s music, each point us to the streets. Our nation has been urbanizing for generations and the face of this John and the thrusts of music calling us to cracked, dark pavement remind us that things in our cities are not always what they appear. God’s view is larger. He is there. And He surprises us by bringing children into our lives who, at times, know it better than we do.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, we praise you again for the miraculous and subtle way you came into the world. Thank you for coming to the people you did, announcing yourself in the ways you did. How kind you are to us, poor sinners who are so slow to understand and believe. In this “now but not yet” time, we rest in the quiet of your presence and think once more about the joy of your birth and its miraculous power—hidden from all but a few. Come, Lord Jesus, into our today, as you did yesterday. And prepare our hearts, minds and souls for the tomorrow of eternity that you gave us at the cross and in the empty tomb.
Amen
Devotion Author:
Dr. Michael A. Longinow
Chair, Department of Digital Journalism and Media
Adviser, Print Journalism; Adviser, The Chimes
Co-Adviser, Media Narrative Projects
Department of Digital Journalism and Media
School of Fine Arts and Communication
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, poetry, and devotional writer selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
John the Baptist II
Kehinde Wiley
2006
Nasher Museum of Art
Duke University
Artist Kehinde Wiley incorporates Renaissance, baroque, and rococo elements in his paintings, with an emphasis on the portraiture referencing the privilege and prestige of the subject. Wiley challenges the conceptions of the portraiture as status with his usage of contemporary streetwear, haute couture, hyper-masculinity, and references to traditional and historical old master paintings. St. John the Baptist II is part of the Nasher Museum’s permanent collection, where curators have placed the work prominently in the European Gallery among works by Rubens, Drouais, and Jacob Jordaens. The striking juxtaposition between the 2000s and the 1600s becomes a powerful reminder of the historical exclusion of the Black body in classical figurative painting. The sheer scale of the large piece in the gallery also makes a striking statement on the disruption of the traditional art historical canon. In this work, Wiley’s subject mirrors the pose of Jordaens’ 1617 painting of Saint John the Baptist.
http://drawingatduke.blogspot.com/2015/10/kehinde-wiley.html
About the Artist:
Kehinde Wiley (b.1977) is a contemporary African-American painter known for his distinctive portraits. His subjects are often young Black men and women, rendered in a photorealist style against densely patterned backgrounds. Wiley incorporates references from many sources, including Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte, Islamic architecture, and hip-hop culture. The artist has explained, “The desire to look at a Black American culture as underserved, in need of representation, a desire to mine that said culture and to lay its parts bare, and look at it almost clinically.” He received his B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute (1999) and his M.F.A. from the Yale School of Art (2001). The artist has gone on to have several successful exhibitions including Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic, which opened at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2015. In 2018, both Wiley and the artist Amy Sherald unveiled their official presidential portraits of Barack Obama and Michelle Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. The artist currently lives and works between New York, New York, and Beijing, China. Today, Wiley’s works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Denver Art Museum, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, among other institutions.
http://www.artnet.com/artists/kehinde-wiley/
|https://kehindewiley.com/
About the Music:
“Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord” from the album The Now And Not Yet
Lyrics:
Prepare ye the way of the Lord
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, oh, the way of the Lord
Make straight paths for His feet
Clear a way in the streets
Prepare your hearts to meet the One who is coming
Every valley shall be raised
The rough places become plains
His salvation comes today to those who would receive Him
Prepare ye the way of the Lord
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, oh, the way of the Lord
What His words have foretold
All together we'll behold
Every knee bending low on the day of His coming
Now is a time of urgency
You must repent and believe
For the day of reckoning comes with His coming
About the Composer/Lyricist/Performer:
Jeremy Riddle (b. 1977) is an American Christian pastor, worship leader, and songwriter. He carries a deep passion for God’s glory and his church. Originally from New Jersey, Jeremy was first introduced to contemporary worship as a twelve-year-old boy through YWAM (Youth With A Mission). Not long after, Jeremy and his family moved to Southern California and began attending the Vineyard Church of Anaheim, where he continued to grow as a worship leader and songwriter. In 2009, Jeremy and his family moved to Redding, California, where they attended Bethel Church and were a part of the Bethel Music Collective. After nearly a decade, the Riddles felt God led them to move back to Southern California, where they ended up back on staff at the Vineyard Church of Anaheim. They currently serve as the worship, prayer and creativity pastors and they are partnering to re-birth a regional and global worship and prayer movement focused on wholehearted devotion to the Lord. Jeremy and his wife, Katie, have five amazing children who they consider to be their greatest ministry assignment and legacy.
https://www.jeremyriddle.com/about
About the Poet:
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) was an American poet. Roethke graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan in 1929. His first book, Open House (1941), took ten years to write and was critically acclaimed upon its publication. He went on to publish sparingly but his reputation grew with each new collection, including The Waking, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1954. Stylistically his work ranged from witty poems in strict meter and regular stanzas to free-verse poems full of mystical and surrealistic imagery. At all times, however, the natural world in all its mystery, beauty, fierceness, and sensuality is resident, and the poems possess an intense lyricism. He taught at various colleges and universities, including Lafayette, Pennsylvania State, and Bennington, and worked last at the University of Washington, where he was mentor to a generation of Northwest poets that included David Wagoner, Carolyn Kizer, and Richard Hugo.
https://poets.org/poet/theodore-roethke
About the Devotion Author:
Dr. Michael A. Longinow
Chair, Department of Digital Journalism and Media
Adviser, Print Journalism; Adviser, The Chimes
Co-Adviser, Media Narrative Projects
Department of Digital Journalism and Media
School of Fine Arts and Communication
Biola University
Michael Longinow is the Chair of the Department of Digital Journalism and Media and the advisor of Biola’s student newspaper, The Chimes. Longinow attended Wheaton College, earning a B.A. in Political Science, and completed a Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky. Longinow learned the wonder of Christmas as a frocked children’s choir member trudging candle-lit aisles of an Episcopal church in Oak Park, Illinois. His three adult children have made him a grandfather five times: with two boys and three girls. All live in California. Michael and his wife live in Yorba Linda with a dog named Bentley.