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What is your saddest Christmas memory?  My apologies if this question caught you off guard or if you were expecting an opening line that was significantly more “merry and bright” on the day before Christmas.  But, I seriously want you to stop reading for a moment and think about it.  What is the saddest memory that you associate with Christmas?

Maybe you just now thought about something that happened many, many Decembers ago, so long ago that it almost seems like it happened in another lifetime, or someone else’s lifetime.  It might be that you have experienced several Christmases that could competitively vie for the title of “worst ever.”  Perhaps you would identity the Christmas that is coming tomorrow, because of what is currently burdening your heart, troubling your thoughts, and causing pain in the depths of your soul.

If circumstances past or present have you in a state of mind and emotion that simply makes it impossible for you to feel overly excited or enthusiastic about feasting and festivities, ribbons and bows, trees and wreaths, tinsel and toys, please keep reading.  Christmas is precisely for you.

My saddest Christmas came in 1984 when my grandfather passed away unexpectedly on December 25 from a heart attack, just as our family was gathering at his home.  It wasn’t just sad, but shockingly so, and Christmas Day would never be the same again.  One of the two Christmases that I spent in Australia was the most melancholy and disappointing that I ever experienced because a much-anticipated holiday visit from a friend from the U.S. didn’t happen.

At this time eight years ago, Dad was in St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa following another heart attack and MRSA infection, all of which seriously negated the recovery he had made since the massive heart failure he suffered two hours after Mom’s death on September 16 of that year.  I was asked to leave his hospital room while a PICC line was being put in his upper arm, so I headed to the lobby to wait for Kim and Hannah to arrive for a shift change.  I stood alone on the stairs above the lobby and listened as a choir of Amish teenagers sang, “O Come, All Ye Faithful” and “Silent Night.”  Tears began to flow.  There was not an ounce of happiness lurking anywhere in my body at that moment, but my grief, sadness, and emotional wounds were being bound up and dressed with the oil and wine of hope, expressed in the words of those hymns of faith in Jesus Christ as God’s Son, Immanuel, “God with us,” a Savior, the hope of the nations, love’s pure light.

Christmas is a season for every emotion.  Christmas affirms our faith that Jesus came into this world to bring light into our darkness (John 8:12), to provide sympathetic mercy and comfort for our sorrows (Isaiah 53:3-4; Heb. 4:15-16), to offer gentle nurture and loving protection for the bruised reeds and flickering candles of our hearts (Isaiah 42:1-3), to compassionately bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted (Isaiah 61:1), and to bring reassuring calm into our chaos as the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6).

Far beyond a mere wish, my sincere prayer for you this Christmas is this: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit,” (Romans 15:13).