Finding Joy

At Christmas, everything is amplified.  Beauty deepens and becomes more stunning.  Light intensifies and grows brighter.  Joy is heightened and shared.  But something else is being magnified this season too.  Sometimes all the brightness illuminates sadness, reflects grief.

This week, I visited a friend after finding out she has breast cancer.  Her kids are four and six years old and she is ready to fight, but she's terrified.  My aunt is spending her first Christmas without her father.  A long-time friend just lost her aunt to lung cancer.  A dear pal is still reeling from the loss of her brother and is beginning to realize that grief has longevity that transcends months, maybe even years.  And a local Virginia family is courageously preparing to say good-bye to their daughter, Ellie, after a year long battle with cancer.  These people can't compress, can't downplay, they can't diminish their grief just because it's Christmas.  Grief contracts.  It labors.  It can birth intense lonlieness and feed on isolation.  But it's not the end of the story.

This morning, Maddox and I prayed for Ellie Blaine.  I told her that Ellie may go to heaven soon, maybe even today.  "But Mom" she said, "she'll miss Christmas!"  No, no, baby girl.  She'll get Christmas.  Face-to-face Christmas.  Angels singing Christmas.  Glorious Christmas.  

It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
"Peace on the earth, goodwill to men
From heavens all gracious King!"
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled;
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world:
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o'er its Babel sounds
The blessed angels sing.

O ye beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow;
Look now, for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing;
Oh rest beside the weary road
And hear the angels sing.
 
For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophets seen of old,
When with the ever-circling years
Shall come the time foretold,
When the new heaven and earth shall own
The Prince of Peace, their King,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.

Tonight, we'll light a candle for Ellie.  We'll turn on the tree, all twinkly and bright.  And we'll remember that in all the darkness, a Light still shines.  Sometimes the darker things appear, the brighter He becomes.  "The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." John 1:5