A Weary World Rejoices.

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This year, more than ever, the Christmas season comes with a little (or a lot, if I’m being honest) of heaviness. It’s been a year of new evils, new atrocities and new depths of depravity revealed to us through pictures and headlines that shoot straight to our hearts and fill us with the numbing sensation of sorrow and helplessness.

We know the names of terror and the unresolved issues that float above us like storm clouds ready to burst. We grow tired of politics and rhetoric and feel spun in circles day after day with no real end in sight.

And in the midst of this, there is Christmas. A time when lights twinkle, merriment abounds and a certain magic generally fills the air. To me, the joy of this season is real. I love finding perfect gifts for my friends and family. I love opening gifts myself. I love watching the usual holiday favorites like Home Alone, Rudolph, Family Stone and Christmas Vacation. I love hearing joyful tunes blaring in shopping malls. I even love hustling and bustling it with the masses in long lines and crowded places (sometimes). I love the homemade frosted cookies and hot chocolate by a cozy fire, the cheerful people outside of stores ringing bells and wishing you “Merry Christmas” whether or not you put a quarter in their jars. I love the traditions passed down from generation to generation. I love office parties and white elephant gift exchanges. And I LOVE hearing children singing our favorite Christmas tunes in unison, complete with hand motions and bow ties and fluffy dresses.

But I know this is just part of the picture. Even if some of us taste and experience the goodness of the season, many also get to taste and experience the other side, too. Brokenness in families. Financial struggles. Loneliness. Sickness. Wavering faith. All of these realities in life are somehow magnified this time of year. There are so many complexities to how and why the holidays can be hard for people – some that I can understand firsthand, and some that I can only imagine.

There is a lot of Joy. And there is a lot of Heaviness.

It is in feeling the very real, very legit weight of both that I am sometimes forced to remove everything in front of my eyes, to strip everything away – the sparkle and the sorrow – and see the Christmas season for what it truly is.

“A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

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

It is that THRILL OF HOPE that we feel and know to be real. It was born to us on that night divine. We are a weary people in a weary world, but this season reminds us – we have a reason to REJOICE. We fall on our knees; we hear the angels voices. 

Because of Christ. Because in Him, our Hope was born and it still lives.

Now THAT is magic … the kind of lasting magic I want to pour out of my heart so abundantly that others, too, may feel it. I pray that all  - no matter our circumstance, and even if for just a moment - can experience that real and true THRILL OF HOPE and REJOICE this season!

Christ is the Lord! O praise His Name forever,
His power and glory evermore proclaim.
O night divine, O night, O night divine

Merry Christmas!