A Christmas Sword
One of the themes of Christmas is the rejoicing of a weary world. As we continue our journey with Mary, this week we will be gazing through her grief. In Luke 2:34,35 old Simeon insightfully reminds Mary that the road of discipleship will be a road marked with sorrow. Her son will be the occasion for the rising of many, but also for the falling of many. And to Mary, Simeon says, "a sword will pierce through your own soul also". We might rather that this not be an aspect of discipleship, but then again ...
Ross Douthat is a columnist for the New York Times and author of a recent memoir called "The Deep Places". In this excerpt he wrestles with a God who works in beauty and in brokenness:
"... what I learned from my illness is that chronic suffering can make belief in a providential God, ... feel essential to your survival, no matter how much you may doubt God’s goodness when the pain is at its worst. To believe that your suffering is for something, that you are being asked to bear up under it, that you are being in some sense supervised and tested and possibly chastised in a way that’s ultimately for your good, if you can only make it through the schooling — all this is tremendously helpful to maintaining simple sanity and basic hope. 'If God brought you to it, He can bring you through it', read an aphorism in one of the doctors’ offices I frequented: a neat distillation of what I wanted — and, more important, needed — to believe, in order to get up every morning and just try to hold my world together for another shattered-seeming day."
In the midst of another "shattered-seeming day" what is our hope? It is that God has not only not abandoned us, but that there is some meaning behind it all that tests us. Our hope is that God is weaving together the dark strands of our lives, along with the light strands, into a beautiful tapestry. But how can we believe such a God? Look no further than the babe in a manger. He is the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53). He is the stone the builders rejected (Psalm 118; Mark 12). He wears a crown of thorns and he did his best work on a cross. Yet, He has been given the name that is above all names (Philippians 2). He is still the Incarnate One, ruling and reigning at the right hand of the Father. This is the enduring hope of Christmas.
Photo by Ricardo Cruz on Unsplash