Even the most wonderful time of the year can be tainted by hurt. Maybe you had to take a deep breath this year before climbing those attic stairs, before opening the Christmas cards or setting up the tree.
Maybe you’re dreading the first (or fortieth) Christmas without a person you love. Maybe you just can’t bear to read one more awful headline. Or maybe everything seems bright and shiny—until you find yourself caught off guard by a song, a snowfall, a moment that breaks your heart with longing.
When will Christmas come?
When will the world be made right? When will the promises of Christmas be fulfilled?
The longing we feel at Christmas for a beautiful, whole world free from suffering, injustice, and decay can tinge even our happiest moments with grief, for everything that is broken.
How can we rejoice knowing what we know to be true about our world?
If you wrestle with these things, you belong at the manger—where people of the most disparate socioeconomic groups, people whose worries kept them up at night, people who without the gloss of the Christmas cards might have little to make their situations shine—are able to put down their burdens.
Life is full of unlikely burdens. Mary had one. Joseph had his. The wise men who traveled a great distance to see the young Jesus set their feet on the road with unrest, with longing and curiosity. Each and every shepherd had a story.
They all found their way the manger, but they didn’t stay there. What they found let them return to their lives—to the same imperfect families, the same broken political systems, the same unsafe and unsettled paths of daily life—in peace. With peace.
Surely he has born our griefs, and carried our sorrows.
Isaiah 53:4
This December, when grief steals your peace, remember that the angels brought the shepherds good news. Remember that Mary needed time to reflect. Remember that even Jesus, as a grown man, wept for what was broken.
And remember what else we know to be true about our world—that it won’t always be broken. Hundreds of years before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah declared words that are echoed in the closing chapters of the Bible:
He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces… for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day: “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.”
Isaiah 25:8-9 (see also Revelation 21)
We have waited for him, that he might save us. At Christmas, Jesus came. And he will come again; so we wait now for that day when he will erase our grief, forever. Today, when your heart hurts, pray like this: May we find a peace that is deepened by how deeply we need it. May we find the place—the person—where we can set our burdens down. And like the wise men, may we remember that we are all on the journey home.