Over at the Calvinist International I’ve posted the text of a Christmas meditation from Abraham Kuyper, made possible by the work of Jim DeJong and the Dutch Reformed Translation Society. It’s a rich devotional reflection inspired by the text of Luke 2:8, “And there were shepherds in the fields nearby keeping watch over their flock at night.”
Using the pastoral trope, Kuyper enjoins his readers to:
Think only about your own situation. Think about your shepherding. Think about the flock entrusted to you. Think about your own responsibility to keep watch over that flock at night. What does your conscience say to you about that? The year is coming to a close. Days are flying by. Give an account of yourself; hold a reckoning of your own soul. Brothers and sisters, what, I ask what, have you done with your flock? What have you done with those about whom the Lord said to you, “I entrust these to you!”
Each one of us has been entrusted with the care of something. That’s the basic stewardship reality taught in Scripture. And the waiting of the shepherds, like the Advent waiting of Zechariah, was done in faithful commitment to their stewardship responsibility, whether in the field or the temple. So too must our waiting be a faithful waiting.
Or as John Milton put it in Sonnet 19, alluding to the parable of the workers in the vineyard, “They also serve who only stand and waite.” Let us wait in ready anticipation of the Jesus. Of him Kuyper confesses: “The Shepherd of all shepherds is the Lord, the great Shepherd of our souls.”
