Christmas--the perfect time

I've heard it often this Christmas season.  I've voiced it countless times myself to others, not only this Christmas but in ones' past. It's this difficult reality that the heartaches of life don't cease just because we are moving through a season of merriment.  And it just all seems so wrong...so untimely that grief and loss and sickness and loneliness still exist.  It all feels so out of place.

I find myself in this unique space these last many weeks.   I thoroughly bask in this season of decorating and card-making,Christmas music, gift buying and this year, I confess I am even watching cheesy Hallmark movies. Yes, it's true.   Often times I find myself enjoying these temporal touches of Christmas and then WHAM!  I'm hit with overwhelming sadness.  We aren't spelling it out in black and white but we all know that this is Mom's last Christmas.   How can there not be this overarching sadness?  Mom is weak and tired and unable to throw herself into Christmas as she once did. It breaks my heart to watch this once vibrant woman fading...
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So when someone says to me, "I'm sorry this is happening to you and your family this Christmas, I receive it, having that same sense.

And yet...

Could it be any more timely, then at Christmas?  Not the Hallmark version of Christmas, but the Christmas story...the biblical narrative.  Is there ever a time when we need God to be with us more than now??!!

I have so many friends facing pain and loss that the cumulative sadness is sometimes overwhelming.  And it's Christmas... 

Yes!  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift of Jesus!!  Oh how we need a Savior!  Oh how we need One who truly knows and understands our sorrow!  Oh how we need a refuge in these harsh winds of life!  Oh how we need Jesus to listen to our pain and speak into our confusion and comfort us in our deep sadness...oh how we need Him!

I will still tell you that, "I'm so very sorry that you are moving through heartache this Christmas".  I am deeply saddened that my own family is walking through the "last" of countless things.  But I will also beckon you to embrace, along with me--not the season, but the One who enters into our less than perfect circumstances this Christmas--at the perfect time.