Daily Devotion

This daily devotion is based on the Morning Office. It comes with selected readings from the appointed Psalm and another Scripture text, accompanied by reflections and prayers. This devotion is suitable for personal and family devotions. It will be best to both read and listen. The link to the entire Morning Office today is provided at the end of each devotion. This project started on Ash Wednesday, 2025 and are offered for weekdays only. More info here.

19th March – Paradoxes in Christ

Audio

Prepare

Today is the fifteenth day of Lent. On the liturgical calendar, the 19th of March each year is designated for the remembrance of Joseph of Nazareth, the earthly father of Jesus and husband to Mary. Let us be silent for a moment, and remember.

Psalm Reading

Today’s appointed Psalm is Psalm 25, reading verses 11-15 here.

¹¹ For your name’s sake, O Lord,
pardon my guilt, for it is great.

¹² Who is the man who fears the Lord?
    Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose.

¹³ His soul shall abide in well-being,
    and his offspring shall inherit the land.

¹⁴ The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him,
    and he makes known to them his covenant.

¹⁵ My eyes are ever toward the Lord,
    for he will pluck my feet out of the net.

Scripture Reading

Our reading today comes from the Old Testament. Of the text at Isaiah 11:1-10, we read here verses 6-9.

⁶ The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
        and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
     and a little child shall lead them.

⁷ The cow and the bear shall graze;
        their young shall lie down together;
        and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

⁸ The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
        and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.

⁹ They shall not hurt or destroy
        in all my holy mountain;
    for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
        as the waters cover the sea.

Reflection:

Isaiah gives us a picture of paradoxes or contradictions. Things that are, to us, diametric opposites are held together in peace and harmony. The wolf and the lamb live together. The leopard lies down with the goat. The calf, the lion, and a yearling (fattened calf) eat together. A little child leads all of them.

Jesus is referred to as the Lion of Judah as well as the Lamb of God.  Not that he is half-lion-half-lamb, a composite, like the depiction of the Greco-Roman god of Pan with the body of a man and the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat.  No, Jesus is fully ferocious Lion and wholly meek Lamb. 

Central to the Christian faith is the claim that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human.  In the same time (~30 A.D.) and the same space (of Nazareth, Gailee, Jerusalem), Jesus was both the Son of God and the Son of Man, both the Son of the Father and the son of Joseph of Nazareth.  Jesus was in the beginning with God (John 1:2). He was begotten and not made. Yet, he is also the Son of David, the root of Jessie (Isaiah 11:1 and 10). He was born of the Virgin Mary.    Christ can embrace these seeming diametric opposites. He does this without diluting one or diminishing the other.

It must have been paradoxical for Joseph.  Joseph’s betrothed was pregnant. He had only her word and a dream to help him bear the apparent shame.  He is a descendent from the Davidic line of kings and heir to the promise of God that there “shall not lack a man to sit before me on the throne of Israel” (1 Kings 8:24-26).  Yet Joseph worked with his hands for a living. For some years, he became a refugee with his family in Egypt. This was a land associated with the enslavement of his people. In giving up his own way of life to save the Christ-child from Herod, a king who was illegitimate in the eyes of the Jews, Joseph made it possible for Jesus to save him, and all of humanity, thirty years later, on the Cross. 

What paradoxes do you see in your own life?  Are you uncomfortable with the tension that these apparent contradictions present to us?  Are you tempted to seek relief from these tensions by ignoring, short-cutting, or trying to eradicate, one of the two opposites? Will you pray and renew your trust in Him as you face some of these uncomfortable moments?

Collect

Let our response be guided by the Collect of the Day:-

O God, who from the family of your servant David raised up Joseph to be the guardian of your incarnate Son and the husband of his virgin mother: Give us grace to imitate his uprightness of life and his obedience to your commands; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Link to today’s Morning Office