I came across this column of Bob Lonsberry's today, and it speaks volumes. I hope that it moves you and causes you to ponder and think about your life; that is what reading this column did for me. The simple fact is some Christmases aren’t merry.
They are something else altogether. They are lonely and sad. They are miserable.
They don’t have family and friends. They don’t have presents and trees and carols and cookies. They don’t have love. They have nothing but the haunting reminder of what they are not.
We find Christmases like that after divorce, or estrangement, or death, or in old age. When we struggle with our health or we struggle with our psyche. When life seems to have cut us loose, to have ripped us up and cast us adrift.
There are Christmases like that.
They can come in youth or middle age or when we are elderly and frail. And they can happen to anyone. Even to those who have known the sweetest Christmases.
This is for those people.
The ones for whom this Christmas is not merry.
I am sorry. I am sorry this pain has come to you, that life has treated you like this. I think I know, in some small way, what you are feeling.
And I think I know why.
At least I know why I sometimes feel that way. Like all is gloom and all is lost.
It is because I misperceive.
Not that things are not sometimes truly bad. Not that life cannot in fact be miserable. Not that sometimes we do not actually walk alone.
But still we misperceive. We see things wrong. Out of proportion or context. And we make the horrible worse. We accentuate the negative.
At least I do.
And I do it at Christmas because I think it’s about me. About my problems and my sorrows, my regrets and my reverses. I lower myself into the waters of my discontent, and sometimes I drown.
And that’s where I go wrong. Where I cut my own throat.
Because Christmas isn’t about me. And it’s not about you.
It’s about Him.
And to lose sight of eternal joys in the wallow of temporary sorrows is to make a fundamental mistake. To see Christmas as being about our lives, instead of about his life, is to miss Christmas altogether.
Not just the mistletoe and the presents and the loved ones, but the miracle that makes all those things precious and warm. Because, as wonderful as they are, as eternal as the love of family is meant to be, that is not Christmas.
It is made possible and given hope by Christmas, but it is not Christmas.
And to lack those things at this season is not to lack Christmas.
Because Christmas is the birth of the Savior of humankind. The commemoration of the mission of the Son of God among men, to teach them how to return to their Heavenly Father, to give them victory over death, and to open to them the door of repentance.
That’s Christmas.
The miracle of a tiny baby unlike any child ever born. The humility and love of a God who sends his Son to live and die so that billions of others might die and live.
That’s Christmas.
And that’s Christmas whether you’re among family and friends, or thousands of miles from home. Whether you are loved and cherished, or alone and forgotten. At the dawn of life, or on your death bed.
That’s Christmas.
And it is not diminished by the circumstance of our life. Not my life or yours.
And, in perspective, the difficulties of our lives are almost meaningless. So small and fleeting as to be of no consequence.
To anyone but us.
And to the babe of Bethlehem, who went from a manger’s embrace to a world’s rejection. Who suffered and experienced all, so that he might understand and comfort all. So that no pain of the human heart would be a stranger to him, or beyond his capacity to empathize and console.
He knows pain. He knows your pain.
And if you weep, he weeps with you.
And offers you both a hug and a way out. For now, and forever.
So as you struggle this Christmas, do not look at your problems, look at his love. If you struggle to stay afloat this holiday, do not contemplate your circumstance, contemplate his.
To endure Christmas, you must embrace Christmas. The real Christmas. Because today isn’t about today, it’s about 2,000 years ago. It’s about the eternal plan that has as its first seminal milestone the birth of Jesus Christ.
“Behold,” the angel said to the shepherds, “I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall to be to all people.”
All people.
Even you and me.
Even now.
If the good tidings of that faraway night do not bring us joy today, even amid our sorrows, then we are not listening.
We are not understanding Christmas.
I wish you strength at this difficult time, as tears and grief are your only companions. I wish you faith, to see beyond them, and to replace them.
That the gloom of Christmas will be replaced with the spirit of Christmas, with the Spirit of Christ. That your burdens will be lifted, your eyes will be dried, and your Christmas, if not merry, will be joyous.
Now and forever.
Bob Lonsberry © 2008
http://www.lonsberry.com/writings.cfm?story=2534
