The Gift Of Hope Series

How often have you heard the phrase or description “It’s the most wonderful time of the year”? But what if it’s not?

What if Christmas doesn’t bring alive warm happy memories for you?

What happens when there is an empty chair at the table and Christmas becomes a reminder of a lost loved one or a broken relationship?

One person observed, grief and Christmas go together like fire and ice.

And while that might be true, the reality is, that for some people grief is a natural part of the Christmas season, and they can’t be separated. Christmas will always be a reminder of a loss. A reminder of someone who’s no longer there, for whatever reason.

Or maybe Christmas with all its excesses is a reminder of how little you have. You can’t provide the things your kids want, and they don’t understand why Santa treats the other kids better than he treats them.

In Merle Haggard’s 1973 song, If we Make it Through December, he sings these words,

Got laid off down at the factory

And their timing's not the greatest in the world

Heaven knows I been working hard

Wanted Christmas to be right for daddy's girl

I don't mean to hate December

It's meant to be the happy time of year

And my little girl don't understand

Why daddy can't afford no Christmas gift.

Or perhaps this Christmas will be another reminder of children that will never be yours.

For some, the approach of Christmas might as well be advertised with Dante’s words “Abandon all hope, you who enter here!”

And people just don’t understand. If you don’t put on your Santa hat and a Jolly face you are called a Scrooge or a Grinch.

Perhaps your favorite Christmas song isn’t Jingle Bells, or White Christmas, instead perhaps you find yourself identifying more with the words of Elvis’ hit Blue Christmas and it seems almost as if he wrote them for you.

And you know exactly how Elvis felt when he crooned, “When those blue snowflakes start falling, that’s when those blue memories start calling.”

And for some of you, blue memories are a very real part of the Christmas celebrations.

If Christmas is more blue than white for you, then I want to offer up some hope, hope for today.

Today we will experience the shortest day and the longest night of the year.

We know what it feels like to be in darkness. Others have called it “the dark night of the soul,” or “the winter of our discontent.”

But remember it may be the longest night of the year but tomorrow marks the beginning of the journey back to the shortest night of the year.

In 2022, Angela and I had the opportunity to tour Stonehenge. And the guide was telling us about all the craziness that went on at Stonehenge at the celebration of the summer solstice.

Which is one of only two times each year that the inner circle is open to the public, the second is the Winter Solstice. Which doesn’t attract nearly as many people. They often see over 20,000 in the summer and only less than a quarter of that for the winter celebration.

And he told us that what many of those who come on June 21st didn’t understand, was that wasn’t the date that the builders of the Stonehenge would have celebrated. They weren’t celebrating the day the light began to fade. No, they celebrated on the winter solstice. The day the light began to return.

Our theme this Christmas has been, Gifts from the King, and over the past few weeks Rob and I have preached on the gifts of Joy, Love and Peace.

This morning, I want to take you back the scripture that was read for us earlier, in particular verse 13. Romans 15:13 I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The first Christmas is often romanticized and sanitized, we have a Christmas card perspective of the entire event, with angels in white, pristine shepherds and weary travellers in their royal robes all of whom are gathered round the happy couple who have just welcomed their child into the world in a spotless stable. Really?

The world that Jesus came into was a dark and dangerous world. The fact that Jesus was born in a stable wasn’t the first choice of his parents and probably not the thirty first choice either.

But there was no room for them anywhere else. Any lodging that might have been available in the small town of Bethlehem had already been taken by pilgrims who had returned to their hometown for the census and if by chance there were any rooms to be had they would have been out of the reach of this poor couple.