not-quite-Christmas

This morning I woke up to wonderful snow-- pure, white, crisp snow: enough of it that it forces us to slow...down...and take a deep breath in the midst of our otherwise busy life. So beautiful.

As I am working around my house I have been reflecting and praying for the hurting people in my life, realizing that every corner of our world has its own share of pain as well. A 45-yr-old woman out shopping with her daughters, has an anurysym and is brain-dead. How does a family pull the plug to end the breath of their mother and wife? Another young mom recently diagnosed with brain cancer. My friend who must get through the first Christmas without her husband who died in late summer. She has two sweet little babies who look to her to meet all their needs. The family whose dad is unemployed, struggling to pay the rent and worrying whether they will have enough money to help their special-needs daughter. How will they do Christmas? Chronic pain continues, terminal illness steals our loved ones from us...the list goes on and on.

Why do you suppose pain hurts more during the Christmas season? Could it be that Christmas as we wish it could be, taps into many of the aspects of what heaven is like? Maybe at this season each year, our longing for the perfection of heaven surfaces and we have to face the reality that this temporary stay on earth simply can't measure up to what we were originally created for. In our sentimental minds and hearts, our "picture-perfect" Christmas includes beauty, warmth, meaningful and safe relationships,tender romance,giving and receiving gifts that were hand-picked 'specially for us,full stomachs, no pain,no hurt, no tears...

I don't mean to sound morbid--we are blessed indeed! In more ways than I can count, God has been and will be faithful throughout all of life's ebb and flow. He will never leave us, never! It is the hardest thing to get ahold of, but the most beautiful when we really get it, that what God promises to us in times of suffering is not first relief of the suffering. His promise is to give us HIMSELF. (P. Tripp)

And isn't that the true meaning of Christmas? God coming to earth in the form of a human being--someone we could relate to--entering our lives and walking through our journey with us. Although He healed and radically changed many lives during His time on earth, Jesus didn't magically make all pain disappear. Life as we know it was not eradicated.

Now He walks alongside of us, laughing with us in the joys of life, weeping when we cry, holding us when our world falls apart, loving us with a deep and unending love. And when our Christmas doesn't quite measure up to what our hearts long for, we have this incredible Hope as Christians that we will someday be forever living in a place where it's Christmas all eternity long!