Slider

Never a Night

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Photo by Samantha Matthews, who I recommend highly for family photos!
[I was asked to share about my Christmas hope at an advent service our church hosted at the beginning of December. This is what I shared. Honestly, feeling hopeful has been a struggle for a while. But I was glad for the challenge of keeping my eyes open for it anyway.]

To begin with, this hasn't been an easy year. I'm sure many of you can relate. I've faced some personal difficulties and losses this year, including ups and downs with depression and my grandmother's death in August. The daily grind and somewhat joyful exhaustion of parenthood - endless laundry, dishes, and the sudden realization at around 4pm each day that we do, indeed, need to prepare and eat dinner again tonight, despite having done it the previous night. A close friend moved across the country with her family to pursue living missionally among international neighbors - a good thing, and yet, a loss of closeness for me. Another close friend has lost two pregnancies within the last year, a friend from my school days passed away from complications with breast cancer after only a 6 month battle. Several friends continue to see racism, bigotry and hate manifest themselves daily both personally and in daily newsfeeds against those with whom they share the same skin color, native tongue or ethnicity, and I stumble in my responsiveness to that. Our nation and our world are both figuratively and literally in flames.

In short, there isn't a lack of situations that can seem to be full of hopelessness.

But I've been asked to share about my Christmas hope! My husband's family and my extended family all live in the Midwest. We made the difficult decision this year to not go back again to celebrate with family this year, even after an offer from some family members to help with the travel expenses; the travel across three time zones with young children can simply be too much. I cried after we told them of our decision. Why? What is at the root of my tears? I think the answer comes down to the idea of presence: we all innately feel that, although FaceTime, phone calls and gifts sent in the mail can help, there will never be any substitute for the actual, physical presence with those who are wrapped into our hearts.

But presence - that word - presence is the beauty of what we get to remember at Advent: God's very self as Jesus became physically present with us, with me. The long-promised hope that had been spoken of through generations, suddenly present in a way that humanity could not deny: he could be touched, smelled, heard, seen and, even as we participate at the communion table we are reminded, tasted and consumed.

In recently writing to a friend who is walking a difficult road, I was reminded of this quote from Amy Carmichael:

"Joys are always on their way to us. They are always traveling to us through the darkness of the night. There is never a night when they are not coming."
The Psalmist wrote that "weeping may stay for the night, but joy comes with the morning."

In Isaiah, we are foretold Jesus' birth with the words "the people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned."

This is such good news, friends. Hopelessness doesn't negate the fact that joy is on its way. A dark night means dawn is coming - and it will not be stopped. And the best news the world has ever known - that God has come and made God's dwelling among us wearing flesh and eating food and weeping tears and raising the dead - is still true.

As I was laying down with my oldest daughter last night to put her to bed (children know the importance of parental presence, particularly at bedtime it seems), we landed on the topic of the many names of God. We talked about the verses in Isaiah in which the child to be born will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. In whatever space of hopelessness I may find myself, there is a name of God to remind me of what God's presence does: provide counsel, might, tender fatherly care, and peace. And in this season, I even have the opportunity to hear many times the name Emmanuel, which simply means "God with us".

I have been tempted toward hopelessness this year. But nothing in me can deny that the presence of Jesus changes everything. When I am tempted to give up because I cannot fix the pain and difficulty I see before me, hope has turned me toward opportunities to ask God for a decrease of self and the increase of the assurance of Jesus' current and coming presence. Like a child, my heart is most willing to slow its anxious beating when I focus on the presence and protective power of my parent.

This is my hope this Christmas: a renewed realization of the fact that nothing else will satisfy me, or you, in the soul-deep way that Jesus' presence always has.

This is the hope, this is the joy, that is always on its way to us, no matter what dark night we face.
CopyRight © | Theme Designed By Hello Manhattan