Deep Longing, And Christmas

One of the joys of being a parent is the way in which we can vicariously re-live our childhood Christmases through our children.

But, for many, the further we move into adulthood, the glitter and cheer of Christmas can feel like a forced smile – taking effort to make it feel the way we remember it.

This season has a way of highlighting how things are not right. Our lives are incomplete. Our joy is muted. Our experience is conflicted. We can celebrate like children – but as adults, we still hurt.

This year our family is reading daily Scripture through the advent season. The collection of verses we are reading through have been read during advent for hundreds of years. They feel weighty. Significant.

One night, after privately lamenting the season’s stresses and unfulfilled longings, our night’s Christmastime reading included this, from Psalm 63:

God, You are my God;
I eagerly seek You.
I thirst for You;
my body faints for You
in a land that is dry, desolate,
and without water.
– Psalm 63:1

Half of Christmas is the electric anticipation of familial love and unconditional giving and receiving. This is an image of what Christ ushered in by uniting Himself to humanity.

The other half, though, is an appropriate feeling of being incomplete. A deep longing. A lamentation.

This longing is an indication our soul knows there is still more to come. The King has come. But our bodies, minds, and hearts are not yet fully in His Kingdom.

A few days later we grew excited as we read about the Kingdom He is bringing us into:

An infant will play beside the cobra’s pit,
and a toddler will put his hand into a snake’s den.
No one will harm or destroy on My entire holy mountain,
for the land will be as full of knowledge of the LORD
as the sea is filled with water.
– Isaiah 11:8&9

Enjoy Christmas as a child. Be giddy. Let your children lead you into it.

Enjoy Christmas as an adult. Take note of your longings. Raise them as a deeply felt prayer: Come Lord Jesus. Come.

The depth of your longing may, in fact, reflect the depth of your hopeful anticipation.