itsawonderfilledlife

Week 1
The People’s Need

Dying ≠ Christmas

Death ≠ Christmas

Grief ≠ Christmas

Wanna pour cold water on the Christmas season? Add dying, death and grief. For this triad can steal the joy of this festive season. Wanna take our eyes off the prize, the culmination of the advent season? Walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

Some of us are lonely this season, grieving a loved one whose absence fills us with longing. We are struggling to long for the finale of the advent season, because we are longing for them … the one(s) we miss and love.

Some of us are planning a funeral … while the rest of the world are hanging boughs of holly.

And for some, there is the shadow of death seems to shadowing this season, each advent door opening to one more day of life and breath … but so aware that there might not be an open door tomorrow.

How do we celebrate, anticipate the birth of our Savior as we walk through this valley?

“… the tension between believing in the goodness that is to come

and naming the grief and heartache of our present moment”

Cole Arthur Riley

Ah … that tension.

It is the tension of being fully human while looking ahead to redemption. Looking ahead to (as Revelation 21:4 tells us),

death shall be no more, 
neither shall there be mourning, 
nor crying, 
nor pain anymore, 
for the former things have passed away

This is what we are counting down to, what we are anticipating. While we wait (in the hospital room, the funeral home, the graveside) he will wipe away every tear from their eyes (Revelation 21:4a), for he is near to the broken-hearted (Psalm 34:18). We are not left alone in this dark valley, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me (Psalm 23:4).