Why Christmas is necessary

This season, words of holiday joy and cheer have been a stranger to my soul.

What is supposed to be, isn’t.

I know I am not alone in this. Every person has a part of their soul that grieves at Christmas.

In the season of supposed “perpetual hope,” the words, “it’s not supposed to be this way” oppress our frame

And our shoulders contrast the posture of the Glory that awaits us

And often our only source of comfort is hidden in a memory.

But these realities are what make Christmas necessary.

Joy is not what necessitates Christmas. Sorrow does. Christmas would not exist if darkness did not need the light.

The miracle of God in the flesh in its fullest form was seen in what God truly thought about all the sin, sorrow, and darkness.

The response was not condemnation and judgment.

In reading the story of Lazarus dead in a grave, the mystery of God in the flesh astounded me.

Jesus stood at the threshold of tomb in temporary occupation

And yet

He still wept for what was

Then it dawned on me

To cry is to respond like God

To weep is to agree with God that things are not as they should be.

To respond in sorrow to the world around us is to agree with the heart of God and to bear his very image.

Thus, I would argue that the Christian should be most hopeful and most sorrowful person in the world.

And what is hope, if it does not pierce the darkness? Hope cannot be hope at all.

The point of Christmas is the grief we experience.

And hope is not possible without first grieving.

God’s first expression on earth was the most vulnerable expression of humanity: the guttural cries of a baby.

These tears mirrored the agony of humanity, and its seeming finality knew the beginnings of God here with us.

God was here with us, and thus so was the promise of days when joy is no longer forced to keep company with grief.

However, those days are not yet among us, as God’s tears so prove.

So if you find yourself suffocating under the weight of your sorrow, know that your broken heart is exactly why God cried infant tears. If you cannot feel the hope and joy of Christmas, then how much more is Christmas for you!!

What a divine mystery hidden in the holiest of nights:

That the word became flesh and wept among us.