Because of the hope that the birth of Christ brought into the world our weary souls can rejoice.
I know, I KNOW, some of you reading this are finding it very hard to rejoice and your souls are weary beyond understanding. I get it! Are you weary to your very core? I’m not ANYMORE but I have spent years getting through, not just days but moments, only because of God’s sustaining power.
Today is December 18th. On this day many years ago, while eating dinner with my family and specifically feeding my little five month old baby girl, we got a phone call from the local hospital requesting permission to treat our oldest daughter. That meant one thing to me immediately, she couldn’t make the phone call herself and the “you need to get here as soon as you can” meant that she just might die.
Truthfully I don’t recall the next few moments but I do remember holding onto my baby girl so tightly that it made her cry. I do remember kissing her tears away and still holding her tightly and praying - the same prayer over and over - “God, please let me say goodbye to Candy, God please don’t let her die alone.” Unreasonable prayer - probably but shock does weird things to your mind.
I was not holding onto my baby for comfort, I was holding onto her because she had almost died herself at birth five months earlier and well, quite frankly, I held onto her a lot!
I remember getting to the hospital and some people took us to a “quiet” room and we were told to call our pastor and to make funeral arrangements because Candy (with a y) was on full life-support, no brainwaves and as soon as they removed the life support equipment, she would be gone and actually she was gone already.
She had left the house earlier in the day with a friend to eat at the Olive Garden, she was sixteen. If you’re doing the math, yes my babies were fifteen years apart and just as a side-line of encouragement, I had prayed for so long to have another baby and God gave me my Ashley at just the right time.
But on this day, I didn’t think about those things, I really wasn't’ thinking at all, just numb - still praying that “Let me say goodbye” prayer and wishing the doctor would stop talking and they would let me see my daughter. They were explaining what we would see and trying to prepare me for the horror that awaited; a ventilator was breathing for her, they had drilled a hole in her head and placed a tube so that fluid could drain as her brain was swelling rapidly and had nowhere to go. They explained that the roof of the car had caved in on her head and that her skull was crushed and that there were no signs of life and no brain waves.
The Neurosurgeon just kept talking and saying if by some miracle , which he didn’t believe in, she survived that based on the global brain damage she would be in a permanent vegetative state and suddenly I heard myself interrupting and just blurting out, “I want to see my daughter!” The trauma nurse gently explained that they were still cleaning her up and that as soon as they had done that, I could go back and see her. I told them that I would clean her up. Somewhere in the shock, I felt that it was the last thing I could do for her and maybe just maybe, somewhere she would see and know how very much I loved her.
Irrational thoughts, gut wrenching even as I write, memories locked away in wounded places that never completely heal and you’re probably thinking, well this sure isn’t making me feel any better. I thought this was going to be about a weary soul rejoicing. It is! I’m only elaborating a bit more than I normally would because I used to cringe when someone I considered had a complete lack of understanding of what I was going through would try and offer some trite words of comfort and throw some scripture in and I FELT SO ALONE.
It is December the 18th and I am REJOICING like never before! How is that possible? Because God is Faithful and Patient and Holy and Just and Good and Kind. What? Yes! It has been twenty nine years since that fateful December day. God chose to let Candy live in her very shattered body until 2017 and many of those years were even harder than the night of the 18th in 1991.
Would you believe me if I told you that I got most everything wrong in the early years? Well, I did. I kept trying to deal with things in my own power and figure out things in my own way. Now, fellow Christians, life can throw you some unhittable curve balls that not only can you not hit with your bat but that strike you so hard that you are injured at the plate. It is during these times that you begin to understand that only GOD himself can comfort you and only GOD himself can give you hope and only GOD himself can help a weary soul come to a place of rejoicing again.
So what changed that could enable a person to rejoice regardless of the circumstances? God ? no - one of His attributes is that He is IMMUTABLE, meaning He does not change. So what changed? Me! Great and prolonged suffering will do one of two things to you as a Christian; you will either begin to grow as you strive to know God better or you will devolve into a very bitter and angry person.
I walked around the bitter and angry mountain long enough to destroy a few lives before I began to comprehend that the only way to “rest” my weary soul was IN God, IN Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. I encourage you who are weary to pray for God to increase your vision of Him. I encourage you to open His book and look for Him - not look for words to make you feel better.
2020 has been a hard year on many, many people and I know that some of you are still in the shock phase of having lost a loved one to this plague that has enveloped our planet. I personally think that the “shock” phase is merciful for if we had to bear the brunt of some sorrow upfront and immediately, I think it would kill us. Some of you have passed the shock and are into the grieving stages, be kind to yourself. If you are in the “God, why did you let this happen” phase, He will not get mad at you. However, I can attest from personal experience that the longer you push Him away the longer you negate his healing power in your life. (I speak of spiritual healing here, not physical.)
If you want to know how a weary soul can rejoice, look at the hope born in a stable. The kind of hope that can cause a weary soul to rejoice can ONLY come from God. There is no person or pleasure or cause or even a church that can give you the kind of hope that reaches down into the pits of the places that no one ever talks about and can lift you to the heights that no one can describe and give you joy unspeakable and full of glory. Only God can do that.
We know as believers that the birth of Christ was followed by the death of Christ on a horrible Roman cross but that on the third day He was resurrected and is now seated in heaven at the right hand of the Father. Is there a greater story of Hope?
This blog topic and content can only be received by those who are ready. You may not be yet. I encourage you to mark it and go back and read it 6 months from now, a year from now. In the meantime - God has got you if you are His child whether it feels like it or not.