Hello, friends!
I wrote this piece a couple of years ago and wanted to share it now. I hope it can be a blessing!
Practice guitar for the Christmas program.
Continue with gift preparations.
Finalize edits on my aunt’s obituary.
It’s a cruel and confusing thing to be grieving while the world swirls in such happiness and anticipation to the tune of “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” blaring over the radio.
But isn’t that why we have a Christmas in the first place?
God saw, God grieved, and so He came. Christmas isn’t a fragile veneer that’s been plastered over reality. It’s the reality of God made flesh so death could die, and deep grief gives us the opportunity to celebrate that in a way that goes much deeper than trite choruses and wooden nativity scenes.
We stand beside caskets that hold the shells of the ones who have burst into eternity before us, and we lower them into a hole in the earth’s frozen heart and our weeping hollows us out because we are broken, dying humans living in a broken, dying world.
But we sow these shells in a sure and tearful expectation, because, just as the souls we have loved have shed their shells, these shells will one day shed these caskets and meet their Savior in the air because we are healing, blood-bought humans living for a healed and blood-bought world.
And so we carry our grief, sometimes over our shoulders, sometimes in deep, hidden pockets, but always with a deep-seated expectation that weeping only endures for a night, and joy will come with the morning.
Whether that morning is earthside or not matters not to us, because we are trusting a flimsy future to the hands of a sturdy God. He has worked all for the good of those who love Him, and He is unchanging. Why should He think He will break that habit now?
Photo by Klim Musalimov on Unsplash
Laurel Luehmann 