Fourth Monday in Advent

Sweet Vindication

Say the word “injustice” and it’s easy to come up with examples. Here are a few that popped into my head:

· In 1790, the 293,000 enslaved persons in Virginia comprised only 42 percent of the slave population in the U.S. at the time.

· Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, and Joseph Stalin made careers of mass murder.

· My brother-in-law was killed by a texting driver who later laughed about it and lied to cover his actions.

· Islamist terrorists of Boko Haram murdered the parents and siblings of a nine-year-old girl as she watched.

· Six members of my friend’s family were murdered in the Rwandan genocide.

· An evil man spends a lifetime enslaving more than 30,000 child soldiers, whom he trains to kill people, including their parents.

· Many falsely accused innocent people sit in overcrowded prisons awaiting justice.

Throughout scripture we find the phrase “the day of the Lord” or “that day.” And for the those who committed the injustices described above, and billions like them, the day of the Lord will come as a terrifying time of judgment, “like a furnace” in which “arrogant evildoers” burn like “chaff.” Sometimes people talk only of God’s love apart from how that love brings justice. But those who do so miss the biblical promise of a future day of judgment. And that day is intended to give the believer hope. It’s like a promise, announcing “Your vindication is coming!”

Have you ever seen a calf skipping? That’s what we’re promised it will be like. Indeed, in the words of fourteenth-century anchoress, Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Today is not that day. But it’s coming! —Sandra Glahn

Prayer:

Come, Lord Jesus! (Rev. 22:20).

He will come again in glory

to judge the living and the dead

And his kingdom will have no end.

Photo credit: Andre Hunter for Unsplash