Was there ever quite a year like this one? I don't know what 2020 has held for you, but I imagine that it has left you with unknowns, voids, unanswered questions, and unmet longings. If you wonder what could this season of Christmas possibly give you this year in light of all of that, I invite you to take a brief moment to pause to ask what this advent season (the season of celebrating Christ's birth) could give to us.
I'm really struck this year more than ever about the true meaning of advent. Advent has its roots in this idea of longing and waiting. We are awaiting the celebration of the coming of our Savior, but we are also waiting now for His second coming when all things will be made new. Was there ever a year where we have all collectively felt such an ache and such a longing over brokenness that almost cannot be expressed?
For those of us who are weary and worn down, advent is for us! Isaiah 53:3 describes Jesus as, "..despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief…" How amazing that He came to literally taste and experience this world of brokenness at its fullest—He Himself came in a human body capable of getting sick, capable of feeling tired. He came as a man capable of feeling emotions, of feeling sad. He tasted and experienced what daily life looks and feels like in a fallen world in a fallen body.
Jesus also intimately feels our personal pains- whether your personal pain is that of loss of a family member, dark cycles of depression, loneliness of singleness, a chronic health condition, relational conflict, etc... Jesus came to feel and to bear your burdens specifically, because the baby boy in a manger would not only grow up in a fallen body in a fallen world for you but would ultimately die for you.
Advent and the manger ultimately point to the cross. Isaiah 53:4 tells us that on the cross, "Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows..." He came not just to bear our sins but our very grief. He knows exactly what your specific ache feels like. Jesus longs to walk with you and me in that space. This Christmas season, you do not have to pretend you are ok. This is a season with an invitation to bring our honest aches, unknowns, unanswered questions, and unmet longings to Jesus in the manger who became Jesus on the cross. May we long for Him with an expectation that He fill our voids with Himself.