Christmas 2023

As we marked the winter solstice yesterday, the words buried in my heart from a childhood of Lutheran Sunday School Christmas “pieces” memorized were echoing…

             “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” Isaiah 9:2

This holiday season my heart has been tender as I make my daily rounds, to see the pains of this world for so many in my circle of love.

On the many mornings, I wake in the wee hours and pray… for the hearts of our two teenagers who were recently wounded in a drive-by shooting of their home and for the loved ones battling illness or depression or drug addiction…

On Sunday, as I listened with someone about the untreated mental illness of their family member…

On Monday, as I messaged and called the different friends who are starting chemo and radiation treatment this month….

On Tuesday, as I dropped off cookies off to my elderly neighbor down the street who has lived with cancer for so many years and now is in his last days. He called me “sweetheart” again when we said goodbye and I came home and cried at his skeletal state… 

On Wednesday, as I talked with a young couple with full-time jobs and wages so low they struggle to make ends meet and a neighbor still grieving the painful loss of a loved one…

On Thursday, as I made soup for a friend having surgery in the days before Christmas…

We have sometimes been told that our letters bear too much sadness that people don’t like reading them. Life would be easier if we were not privy to so much heartache and pain. 

However, I feel the great and beautiful and heavy weight of the grace of God that we are here in this very real world of the shadows and darkness of human existence. 

For it is for this very world and for these very people 

that the God of Creation, 

the God of the Universe, 

the God of the seas and the mountains and the earthquake and the cyclone, 

the God of the still, small voice

came as a baby, 

as a very human being, 

to be Immanuel, 

God with us. 

I hold in my heart, often through tears, doubts and struggle, the truth that that great and mighty God is present with us in the suffering and pain and trials and injustice of this wicked world. I base my life on the truth that God is not a God who is far off watching our pain and our struggles, but that Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit is indeed Immanuel, the God who is with us. And that our dear Jesus, who knew what it is to face oppression, injustice, suffering and death is with us when we hurt and when we cry. And he is here to show us the way through the shadows and the darkness and the death, to follow him through to new life and resurrection.

So dear friends, whether this is a bright and shiny Christmas for you, or one where your heart and spirit are sore or sorrowing, we are reminded,

That through the suffering and the pain, there is HOPE and his name is Jesus. And in those moments, like when I am standing with my neighbor whose life is wasting away, I can say, “Let’s Pray” and cling to the hope that Jesus’ very real presence and very real life can be alive for us in this hurting world.

That is the joy of Christmas.