It’s been over a month since I last posted here. A lot has happened in our nation. A lot has happened in my heart. I currently have a seven-page document filled with notes, thoughts, stories, quotes, and emotional purging entitled “The Unexpected Sadness” open on my desktop. I have tried time and again to take these words, these thoughts, these feelings and put them into concise and coherent form. I have failed.

Maybe that’s where you are sitting today as well.

Maybe you are trying to make sense of what has happened these past couple months. Maybe you are trying to make sense of what is still happening.

Maybe you are trying to stir up feelings of hope that should mark this beautiful season of advent, and yet all around you are things that frankly look and feel utterly hopeless.

Maybe you are looking at the wreckage of broken relationships and asking if there is any way they will ever be repaired.

Maybe you are, like I am, asking God, how He can bring these dead bones back to life.

Frankly, I am feeling rather lost right now. Not lost from Jesus. Jesus feels very near. Yet, I feel lost in this world, in this nation, and sadly, even in the Church.

I have experienced painful and confusing seasons in my 40 years, but this one is different. This is not a dark night of the soul. This is not a period of personal suffering. This feels like a corporate spinning where nothing seems settled and no future seems clear, promising, or good. Though the promise of the New Jerusalem sustains my soul, there does not seem to be a bright light at the end of this earthly tunnel.

Enter Christmas.

Since I was a little girl, long before I knew Jesus, I loved the Christmas season more than any other—the lights, the songs, the parties, the decorations. I loved it all! It felt magical, joyful, and chocked full of comfort and peace. As an adult, though much of the magic has been lost in the pressures to inspire that same sense of wonder and joy for my children, I still love Christmas. It continues to bring up something childlike and beautiful in my heart.

But this Christmas is different. This Christmas does not feel quite so joyful, or magical, or full of wonder. Many of the traditions cannot be done. We won’t be with family for Christmas. We won’t even get to go to church on Christmas Eve. And it is sad. When I think of all the things that won’t and can’t be this Christmas, I am tempted towards self-pity, towards despair. No matter how many carols play, no matter how many Hallmark Christmas movies I watch, I just cannot seem to find “that Christmas spirit.”

But in this place of sadness and temptation to despair, I have unburied an unexpected gift. If there is one upside to all that has been experienced and uncovered in 2020 it is this:

There is no more room for pretending everything is ok.

There is no more space for fluff, for easy answers, for platitudes. Avoiding “the hard” is no longer possible because everything is hard. Sticking our heads in the sand to the pain, the division, and the injustice is no longer an option. The curtain has been pulled back; hearts have been revealed and no matter how much we might like to go back to “normal” times, to “simpler” times, here we are, naked in “real” times.

And here is the thing: very little of what we have been forced to see is new.

We tend to talk about 2020 like it is this anomaly where space invaders descended upon the earth and new, awful things were created that have never been before. Now, I will give you that a global pandemic is new. The coronavirus did not exist two years ago. It IS new! Dealing with a pandemic IS new.

But the vast majority of what has made 2020 the dumpster fire that it has been IS NOT new. Racism isn’t new. Government corruption isn’t new. Christian nationalism isn’t new. The controlling idols of power and money surely aren’t new. And the desire for personal freedom over corporate good is perhaps most sadly not new. None of this stuff is new. It has just been revealed in a way that we can no longer ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist.

Merry Christmas, right? Joyful advent, huh?

The unveiling of these things isn’t a gift to me because I am some kind of masochist who delights in pain. It is a gift to me because it is bringing me, and I hope all of us, to finally, wholeheartedly believe and declare what has been true all along:

Spiritual Band-Aids are not going to cut it, because they were never intended to.

  • We don’t need little changes or even major reform; we need total redemption.
  • We don’t need a new President, or a balance of power, we need a new Jerusalem.
  • We are in a mess that only God can clean up.

And isn’t this what Advent is all about?

Advent is not a time of cookies and fires in the fireplace (though I thoroughly delight in both of those things!). Advent is a time of waiting, of longing, of hoping beyond all earthly hope for Christ to come and bring healing, forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption. Advent is a time to remember how the Christ first came, but also a time to long for Him to come again. It is a time to remember how Jesus changed everything, and also a time to plead with him to change everything.

There have been advent seasons when songs like “Joy to the World” and “Angels we Have Heard on High” have come off my lips with ease and wholeheartedness. This advent, the songs I am gravitating to are “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “Come, thou Long Expected Jesus.” The seemingly endless longing of Israel for those hundreds of years after Malachi’s prophecy awaiting the Messiah feels utterly close this advent. The years Anna spent in the temple praying for the consolation of Israel are closer to my grasp than ever before. The uncertain, yet certain waiting of Mary and Joseph those nine months is the waiting I feel so deeply in my soul today.

And the question begs to be asked: Would I feel this connected to this deep longing this advent if 2020 hadn’t been “so 2020?”

When my mind and heart ask this question, I feel new life pop through the soil of my soul. It doesn’t feel big. It doesn’t feel powerful enough to drown out the very real disappointment. And yet it feels real. It feels more real than any advent has ever felt. It feels honest. It feels pure. It feels desperate. But it feels hopeful.

As I think about those four candles of advent, at first the words prick at my soul:

Faith: faith in God? Yes. Faith in humanity…?

Hope: hope for eternity? Yes. Hope for the next year…?

Love: love for those who have walked with me faithfully? Yes. Love for those whose perspectives seem dangerous and hurtful…?

Peace: peace within my family? Yes. Peace for our nation…?

But then the new shoot speaks to me: “This is exactly WHY you need Advent”! While these four things feel so far off right now, there is a groundedness that comes with hitting the bottom. In that place, where we long for these four things desperately, and where human striving is utterly useless, we are most ripe to trust God for these things; we are most ripe to believe in His power and in His goodness and to truly surrender all.

We light these candles at Advent because these are the things that Jesus’ birth ushered into a broken first century world. We light these candles at Advent because these are STILL the things that Jesus can and will usher into an equally broken twenty-first century world.

So, if you are finding the Christmas spirit hard to grasp this year, might I suggest that you to grasp for Advent instead.

Place before Jesus the things that feel painful; the divisions that feel insurmountable; the future that seems impossible. Cry out to Him from the honest depths of your soul. Don’t push away the longing for something more because the necessary feeling of present brokenness in that longing feels too much to bear. That is actually the heart of what this season invites us to do.

Join with the carols:

“Oh come, oh come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel!”

“Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free!”

We need you Jesus. And so, this Christmas, we beg you to come. Come into our hearts with comfort, healing, conviction and love. Come into our communities with peace, understanding and compassion. And come into our world with healing. We know that in you alone, these things are possible.

Amen