What will Christmas look like this year? Our usual holiday activities and gatherings will be different as we continue to take precautions due to the coronavirus pandemic. In this season of holiday cheer, we may find ourselves weighed down with feelings of loss. We may wonder what is wrong with us, and why we feel as we do. We may try to put on a brave face and go through the motions, but it can be a struggle as well as exhausting. We may also feel like we are spiritually empty; God seems distant and aloof from what we are going through. It can be a help to know that we are not the first people to experience all of this. Countless others who have gone before us have also experienced these same painful seasons of life. What can we learn from them?

Take a few minutes and read through Isaiah 40, which begins what is called “The Book of Consolation,” stretching from Isaiah 40-55. The prophet, who lived some 750 years before the time of Christ, is called to announce the coming of the Lord. Originally spoken to God’s people living in exile in far-off Babylon, Isaiah announced that they would be coming home again to Jerusalem. The omnipotent and omniscient God who created the heavens and the earth is concerned for the people He has created. The hearts of God’s people had grown weary and discouraged with all that they had lost and all that they have suffered. They said things like, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by God” (Isaiah 40:27b). Sound familiar? Don’t we think and say these same things in our own lives when our hearts have grown weary and discouraged with what we have lost and suffered?

The Lord speaks a word of mild reproof, as well as a word of hopeful encouragement, to his people then and now: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength” (Isaiah 40:28-29). When we are feeling weak and vulnerable, fragile and broken, we need to be reminded that the Lord God who created us, who loves us, and who sent his only Son to die for us, has our back. He has not forgotten us. He tells us: “… but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). The Lord God calls us to wait for him, but waiting can be hard to do. How long, O Lord? We long to have our strength and hope renewed. We ache for the day when weariness and faint heartedness will give way to revitalized energy and vigor. Though we may not feel like it, the Lord calls us to patient hope in our waiting. This is where the help and care of others is a great gift. By allowing others to enter into our pain and suffering, they help us to wait. They help to bear our burdens. They become the hands and feet and mouth of Jesus. Through their ministry of listening and caring, they help us, bit by bit and day by day, to mount up with wings like eagles.

Several years ago, before my mother passed away at age 96, I called her shortly before Christmas. Her eyesight and hearing were failing. She was bent over with osteoarthritis, and she sometimes felt like life was hard to bear. She was more than ready for the Lord to come and take her. But when I spoke to her that day, she shared with me something that she had memorized for her congregation’s Christmas program more than eighty years ago before when she was in Confirmation. It was a stanza of a Christmas hymn by Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676), and she remembered it perfectly:

             All my heart this night rejoices

            As I hear far and near

            Sweetest angel voices.

            “Christ is born!” their choirs are singing

            Till the air everywhere

            Now with joy is ringing.

This is what brightens our darkest days. This is the “good news of great joy that is for all people” (Luke 2:10), even people who are feeling weak and broken. Isaiah prophesied the coming of the Savior, but he did not live to see this. You and I live this side of Christmas, and we look back on what took place so long ago in Bethlehem. The gift of God’s love and forgiveness, peace and blessing in that tiny Babe of Bethlehem brings light to our darkness and joy to our sadness. Know that this gift is for you, and that this Jesus invites you to come to him with your burdens and your cares. In Jesus, who loves you and shed his blood for you, you will find hope and strength. When Christmas hurts, and it sometimes hurts for each one of us, let us go back to that gift of all gifts which money cannot buy nor good works deserve: the gift of Jesus. There is healing and hope for each one of us in him.

Everyone has experienced some degree of loss this year, whether great or small. With this in mind, I invite you to a special online worship service that acknowledges the pain of loss and grief, in whatever form that may take. This service is called “When Christmas Hurts,” and it will take place on Thursday, December 17, at 7PM on Facebook Live (https://www.facebook.com/StJohnsAlexandria/).  The service happens near the shortest day of the year (December 21, winter solstice) and so is an appropriate time to remind ourselves of Jesus who is the Light of the world and Emmanuel, God-with-us. 

A happy and blessed Christmas to you.