A Weary World Rejoices

I’m currently sitting at the Local Pastors’ Coffee Shop.

You know the one: where all the young, on point church staff come to disciple people and “unpack stuff” and stuff. You know them because they’re all wearing tiny ripped pants, immaculate lifestyle tennies, and the type of glasses that were previously only worn by people featured on the crime watch portion of the news.

Speaking of, I’m so sad that I’ve reached the age where I verbally opine on “the crazy fashion trends these days”. I went to a worship concert a few months ago and all I could talk about afterwards was why the main guy looked like Weird Al circa 1985 and the main girl was wearing my Uncle Claxton’s Dickies jumpsuit.

Anyway.

We’re already off topic and we just started.

So I’m sitting at this coffee shop where everyone is happy. Smiling, laughing, chatting – voices echoing off of every wall in this place. Humanity connecting. It’s sweet.

And yet I’m feeling heavy.

Because based on my own self at times, based on life experience, based on the hard conversations I am having with friends over text this very moment in this very space…I know that half the people in this coffee shop are going to drop their smile before they even reach the parking lot. Half these people will peel off that happy mask within seconds of walking out of here.

That was a nice little reprieve, but back to reality. Back to the big, massive, secret, conversation-killing burdens I left unattended in the car. 

Reality is hard. Earth is hard. Life is hard. Seasons are hard.

Especially this one – the most magical season of the year with the gifts and the snow and the twinkling lights, people are hurting. People are carrying unimaginable burdens. Life doesn’t take a break even if schools do. Pain doesn’t keep the same vacation schedule we do.

There is hurt, and that hurt feels at odds with festivity.

I am keenly aware of it this year, because many of my friends are those people.

Friends fighting invisible, dark battles in their minds. Friends spending their first Christmas without a parent. Friends looking at a fixed income that isn’t matching their ever-increasing financial needs. Friends beginning the year married and ending it divorced. Friends celebrating a season centered around the birth of a baby while desperately wanting their own.

People are hurting. Right around us.

We know that, but we don’t like to talk about it. We want to forget for a minute. We want to numb our problems with hot chocolate and Cyber Monday sales.

And it works!

………..for a second.

And then nighttime strikes again and you lay in your bed and you can’t sleep and all the gross comes back.

We all know people are hurting.

Maybe those people are you.

And I just want them to know – I want me and you to know – that instead of ignoring or numbing or pretending otherwise, Advent is a safe space to hurt.

There is room for weariness, room for loneliness, room for pain here.

In fact, it’s exactly what makes the season so mystical and magical!

It’s not the monogrammed ornaments or the Hallmark/Lifetime/Netflix/Amazon-Original-Christmas-themed-movies-that-are-awful-yet-enchanting. It’s not the new Nintendo Switches or noise-canceling AirPods. It’s not the instagram-worthy tablescapes or the perfectly baked Christmas ham.

The wonder of Christmas is this:

Many many years ago, there was a world that was full of death. Dark. Broken. Groaning in pain.

In this world were deeply loved, perfectly created, very lost children who had no idea how treasured they were, no idea what life without death meant.

Their creator Father – the one who made them in his very image, who breathed his very life into them – could only watch their pain from a distance. Because of his goodness, his holiness, his purity, he could not get nearly as close as he wanted to. He could not wipe their tears, he could not embrace or comfort or carry them.

But he was desperate to. He would have moved heaven and earth to make it happen,

and so he did.

He did the unfathomable – he sent his own heart to his children. He sent his heart to enter into their darkness. He sent his entire heart to live and walk and breathe and grieve and celebrate alongside them. Alongside us. To bring comfort, to bring light, to bring hope.

When our father couldn’t get close enough, he sent his heart to become one of us.

Emmanuel – God with us.

God with us.

Each of us.

That’s the wonder of Christmas.

That is what we celebrate – the birth of God’s heart, King Jesus.

The birth of light into darkness, hope into pain, intimacy into loneliness, joy into fear.

• • •

And so I’m sitting here, typing away, feeling all these feels, thinking all these truths, lowkey trying to discern which of the people in this coffee shop needs this reminder right now. It’s hard to tell from someone’s outsides though, isn’t it?

I’m not getting a good read…so I’ll just pass it to you, reading this, right now.

If you find yourself hurting right now, whether it’s out in the open or buried inside where only you can see it, know this: Christmas is for you. Tinsel and festivities and twinkling trees might not be, but Christmas is.

The quiet waiting and hopeful anticipation of Advent is for you.

The thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

A glorious morn already broke once in Bethlehem. But it will break again.

Keep your eyes peeled on the horizon, my friend. The thrill of hope is coming.

And in the meantime, you are seen, you are loved, and there are human people who would like to be with you, too.

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6