My wife and I were driving home from a Christmas Day visit to Grandma’s house this afternoon. On the street corner was a young man, probably in his early twenties, who was “tweaking” from what looked like a serious crystal-meth high. I was surprised to see this on Christmas Day in the sleepy suburban city of Surprise, Arizona. But, I realized that life has been hard on all of us, and it looked like It had been very hard on this young man.
Why would I be surprised? For most of us, this has been an awful year when so many around us have lost their jobs, lost their hope, lost their health, and lost their lives. Those of us that have survived are so angry and divided that we can barely tolerate our neighbor, let alone love him.
A few weeks ago, I created myself a Christmas playlist of music in an attempt to put myself in a festive Christmas mood. I’ve found myself torn this year between feelings of anger, discouragement, anxiety and stress, and feelings of hope, love and joy.
Listening to this playlist on repeat, I was reminded of the song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and the lyrics. At the time this song was written, the world was at war in 1944, loved ones were apart. They were thousands of miles away, many of which were never coming home.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light,
From now on, our troubles will be out of sight . . .
From now on, our troubles will be miles away . . .
These lyrics were appropriate then and they are appropriate now. In light of all that has gone on this year, the lyrics to the song have retained their wistfulness and joy. The lyrics remind us that Christmas brings a feeling of expectant joy that may seem out of reach at the moment.
“Joy,” C.S. Lewis once wrote, “ is distinct not only from pleasure in general, but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.” Every consolation we seek in life – love, beauty, money, pleasure, power, and even sex – is only a poor representative of something beyond Itself. Those who dedicate their lives to pursuing the symbol rather that’s the thing the symbol represents invariably end up disappointed – or worse.
The misery so many celebrities that people have known in their youth who wanted fame, worked and pushed and fought for it. Then, the moment they became famous, the wanted to take an overdose. The giant thing they were striving for, the fame that was to make everything OK, that was to make their lives bearable providing personal fulfillment and happiness occurred, and they found they were still the same person.
That thing we want, that thing that the riches of the world attempt to represent, that thing that seems so near and yet so maddeningly out of reach, is the love of God who made us in his image. It is the only real North Star of our life’s journey, the only true guidepost to become the person we were divinely made to be.
On the very first Christmas, that longed-for thing broke through the earthly barrier and arrived upon our earthly plain. When you and I celebrate this day, we are boldly declaring our faith in the reality of that event and the truth of It’s infinite meaning: God Is there for you and God Is there for me. We know within our souls that our yearning is not in vain.
Maybe in this year of anger, pain, death and sickness, when we all have to muddle through day by day, it would be good to remember the people that we disagree with most, the people we hate most, the people we want to throttle most are also desperately yearning and suffering this year. They, too, are striving for the thing they can’t quite reach. And, many of them do not have our hope and our Christmas faith.
The Savior, Jesus Christ, did not tell us to love our enemies, or our neighbors because he thought it would make them better people or make the world a better place. He told us to love our enemies so that we ourselves might “be children of our Father in heaven. He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain upon the righteous and the unrighteous.”
To love in that way, the way that Jesus Christ exemplified, is to experience within this vale of tears the vale beyond. The reality is that God loves you. Left or Right, black or white, straight or gay, He loves you, and you and I were made in His image.
So, this year, remember, that far-away joy is more real that all of our troubles. Remember, you are not alone. Have a Merry Christmas.
