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Human Rights Day
The United Nations designated December 10 as Human Rights Day. This year I’ve been meditating on how appropriate it is that Human Rights Day is nestled in the midst of our Advent season. In Advent we wait with the excitement and assurance that Christ is coming! We wait for the birth of Jesus, who makes all things possible, even the glorious new creation prophesied by Isaiah in which the rights of all are respected and honored.
During Advent, John the Baptist teaches us how to point the way toward Jesus. “I am not the Messiah,” he says. Rather, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’” (John 1:20–23). I think John would have made a good human rights advocate. He shows us the importance of testimony. In the midst of uncertain and skeptical times, John sees the movement of the Spirit in the world, believes, and proclaims that an impossible hope has actually taken flesh. Following John’s proclamations, the human rights work done by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) at the United Nations and around the world acts as a signpost in a broken and fearful world by pointing the way toward God’s immanent reign of justice. In the midst of the wilderness of poverty, torture, arbitrary detention, religious persecution, and gender-based violence, we affirm that human rights instruments may help guide us closer to God’s realm of surprising power and abiding love.
In defending and celebrating human rights, we might sometimes feel like a single voice crying out in the wilderness. John’s advent experience provides a model of faith and support. We are called to make straight the way of the Lord. For to us a child is born, a Savior, whose birth quickens us time and again to life in all its fullness, dignity, and promise.
—Joel Hanisek, U.N. representative, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Alexandra Buck, Young Adult Intern, Presbyterian UN Office
PC(USA) General Assembly Staff
Elder Douglas Welch, GAMC
Darla West, PILP
Carol Wetzel, GAMC
God of invisible, infinite form, we pray in communion with our family around the world, particularly those whose basic human rights are not respected and whose human dignity is not honored, that you be present in deep absences, that you fill silences with your spirit, and that you illuminate shadows with your love. Be with all of us in the still moments between breaths. Enter into our heart’s rhythm, that your grace be our life source in each step we take together toward healing justice for your people and your Earth. Shalom.
Ps. 18:1–20, 147:12–20 Ps. 126, 62
Amos 9:1–10
Rev. 2:8–17; Matt. 23:13–26
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