Lately..

I find myself confronted with some conflict.

I’ve been home now for a whole month, which is SO very hard to believe. It has been a whirlwind and not at all like I imagined, but I am adjusting. I have a lot of different feelings going on. I’m seeing friends and family, which is great; we’re approaching Christmas, which I love so much; I’m in one WHOLE place for an entire month at this point, which hasn’t happened in a whole year!! There has been a whole lot of new mingled with what I was familiar with. It feels like a dream mixed with some amnesia…

Some things are the same. Some things are different.. I sort of feel at home but have this longing to be with the people I have grown so close to and the once odd places that grew to be comfortable. 

I keep finding myself in the middle of odd comparisons between my life now and where I have been. I’m back in the beautiful Tennessee where it’s cold but I have clothes and am indoors and have a car to travel to get to places that I need, like a job and to Walmart to get food that’s readily available. Watching clean and safe water pour into my water bottle from the faucet inside my safe and secure house. All while I’m remembering the barefooted, hungry kids that ran to greet us every day in Africa just because we were there to play and sing about a man named Jesus with them. He has placed us in what seems like different universes in our respective lives. But this is all purposeful.

I see truth in the fact that we are all human, in need of those basic things like clean water and food. Shelter and clothing and love, someone to care for us and pay attention and listen to us. We all are fragile humans born into families that are intact or broken or half missing, humans with dreams and likes and dislikes. Humans with names and different voices and completely different fingerprints. Humans made by God to be in the image of God, to be one with Him in close relationship through the provision He revealed in the coming of Jesus, which we especially celebrate in this season.

Each human being I got to meet and encounter while overseas, each human being I pass on the sidewalk, is in need of the God that they were created for—in need of Him to empower them to be the man or woman fully alive that they were made to be in Him. Yet MOSTLY in need of the righteousness they could never achieve alone without the perfect life of Jesus offered up for us all. In need of being brought to God by the only way, in the trusting and following Jesus.

“The Son of God became a man to enable men to be sons of God.” -CS Lewis.

The fierce optimist in me wants this Christmas to be like the gaudiest, sparkliest orb ornament on a Christmas tree… Warm and cozy bright and like the Hallmark movies. And thankfully in my own life I have beautiful things like a family and the blessings of a home and some warm sweaters to cozy up in. I thank Jesus for these things.
But like this picture of an ornament, inside it is hollow. That perfect, heartwarming ideal Christmas isn’t real. There is good mingled with bad in this life. Families are broken. Loved ones are grieved as they are remembered lovingly but painfully during the holidays. People are scrambling to afford pay for food, let alone excess presents that so many expect soon. Aside from seeing poverty and darkness around the world, since coming home I have been made aware of these hard and devastating realities. A mother being diagnosed with late-stage cancer, a husband mourning the unexpected loss of his wife’s life, broken engagements and promises.
I truly am an optimist, but I am heartbroken at the reality of tragedy in the lives around me. I can’t just shrug off the disheartening truth of what I have seen and what I know for the sake of “Christmas cheer.”

It helps me see the state of the world more clearly: broken and weary.

And it more than anything points me to the hope only found in Jesus.

“A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn…”

Oh, I so love this song, “O Holy Night.” I love it because it’s so honest and genuine! Not just happy this and rainbows that. This songwriter understood the state of the world, the need for hope, and the relieving reality that hope has come as God Himself, in sending His Son into this world to relate to us, walk with us, cry with us and live a perfect life for us, only to die the death we deserve out of our love for darkness and sin, giving us his righteousness as we by faith receive it as our only hope and as completely sufficient to make us new and holy before God the Father. Jesus comes, born into this same broken and weary world to die. But death was overcome, and this weary world rejoices because of it! Christ is alive and as He rose from the dead by the power of God, He gave us hope. Hope that this vapor of a life on earth is just that—a vapor, (as Audrey Assad beautifully sings about in one of her songs) with death in this earthly life being the gate to eternity with Him in perfect joy and peace and wholeness.

This life has beautiful moments that are a gift from God, moments that point to Him as the Giver, and moments that are a brief taste of what perfection and elation and satisfaction in Him awaits us beyond this world.

THIS is our hope. Not even this life to come, but it is HIM, Jesus, alone. He is our hope. Heaven, a place for us to be with Him. It is all about Him. And He is preparing this place for us before He calls us there someday.. Whether that is the last day of this earthly life or when He returns in sight of the whole world. He wants us with Him, loving only Him, being loved and fulfilled only by Him.

This is our hope and the true joy this Christmas, and really every day. Christ has come to us! Our Immanuel, God with us. He has walked into our bleakness and wickedness, lived with us and loved us, and died to cleanse us from sin forever. He has risen, giving us His Spirit so that we will live, and never die, in perfect joy and satisfaction with Him eternally.

If you don’t have this life and this hope, it is offered to you freely! Ask Jesus to show you truth, to give you sight to see Him. Ask Him to take your life and throw away your sins as He has covered them completely with His sacrifice. Ask Him to give you this hope that is found in him alone and to secure your life eternally as His own daughter or son. He will do it, and He will wrap you up in beautiful, dynamic relationship with him that begins now on earth and that will never end.

“Fall on your knees, O hear the Angel voices, O night divine, O night when Christ was born.. O night, divine, O night, O night divine.”

“She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
-Matthew 1:21

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; a light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness.” -Isaiah 9:2

“For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
The dominion will be vast, and its prosperity will never end. He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on and forever. The zeal of the LORD of Armies will accomplish this.”
-Isaiah 9:6-7

“See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel , which is translated “God is with us.” Matthew 1:23

Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel. -Isaiah 7:14