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Misery loves company, as the saying goes.
With Advent upon us and Christmas accelerating towards us, I am again drawn to the sad and lowly and tragic parts of the Christmas story. I caught myself doing this when Josiah died and I'm on that same path again this season.
Christmas and sorrow. They go together more likely than we think. Most of our holiday rhythms have drubbed out any hint of sadness, for it is after all supposed to be the season of perpetual joy. And so we put on a seasonal sheen to fit in and a festive glow is projected in all that we do. We cloak ourselves with holiday goodwill and merriment, and yet within, our souls are aching and the Christmas season is just making it worse.
Loneliness. Pain. Heartbreak. Grief. Shame.
Christmas sometimes comes at the worst time of the year.
And yet, it is the story of God coming to us. To us. It is the beginning of the slow renewal of the world. It marks the return of God being with man for the first time since He walked in the garden with His creation.
God chooses to be with us.
In sadness. In sorrow. In suffering. God comes.
To suffer with us. To suffer for us.
This is Christmas.
... Advent is not just remembering how the world waited for the coming of the Messiah, but how we still wait for His coming. It is a time to embrace the ache of our lovesick hearts, to rejoice in our hunger pains, to survey the broken mess of our world and know that, because God fully entered into it, He will also fully redeem it.
As we sit in our suffering and know that the God of the universe decides to sit with us in it, we have a truth that is weighty enough to answer our heavy hearts, our loneliness and disillusionment that are intensified during the holidays. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that while God wants us happy as little children, it is the grown-up knowledge of God’s desire to always be with us, the fact that “we are no longer homeless; a bit of the eternal home itself has moved unto us,” that brings true joy. “Therefore we adults can rejoice deeply within our hearts under the Christmas tree,” he said, “perhaps much more than the children are able. We know that God’s goodness will once again draw near.”
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She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel,
which means ‘God is with us.’
~ Matthew 1:23
Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
and to guide us to the path of peace.
~ Luke 1:78-79
[via RELEVANT]
G&P
- Andrew
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