Last night I began the process of trimming our Christmas tree. I began just as I do every year. I light certain lights, and play specific music, and unwrap ornaments and decorations in a certain order. Slowly, the house and tree are adorned in an orderly and thoughtful manner.
I try not to make it a chore. Rather, I think of it as worship, each step an offering to the Lord. This year, as I unwrapped each ornament, and placed it on the tree, I recognized how significant this act was. Lost in the music, I found myself reliving memories, events, the ages and stages of my life. I could remember who gave the ornament, what year, and what was going on in our life at the time.
“Remember “Mrs. So and So”, she gave us this ornament the year we moved to Longview.”
“Oh, look at this one, I bought this the year we went to Seminary.”
“This is the one Nelson made in Kindergarten.”
“This is the one your Godmother gave to us. Look, you can still see her handwriting on the box.”
Each ornament brought back names and faces, and vivid memories, and there was a great poignancy about it all. Many of the names and faces are gone now. Some have died. Some have moved on and out of lives – we are no longer in touch. Some relationships have struggled, and the glittering ornament is only a memento to a flame that never quite caught fire. Yet, they are all part of my history that I now display on my tree. Each placement felt important. Each event was necessary to find its place on the tree. This was the anthology of my life. But to be honest, I felt a soft, subtle grief arising in the beautiful, low-lit ambiance of my room. It was a gentle acknowledgement that life has its losses, and still we light the tree, and still we hum the songs. They seem to go hand in hand.
I wonder if this is part of what Advent is all about. Walking slowly through what we know to be true – our lives, our stories, our shortcomings, our mistakes. They are rich in their complexity. It’s hard to know what was right or good at the time. But here we are, standing in the low light, asking for Jesus to come again. These moments of quiet introspection lead us to pray earnestly, “Come Lord Jesus” – again, into our messy lives, into the grief that we still carry with us since who knows when. I feel like Jesus says, “It’s okay” to linger a while in the loss, to name it as holy. Our losses -our lost hopes, our lost relationships, our lost pride in the name of resilience and love– are holy! Don’t you know that Jesus grieves them too! In every lost opportunity to love, there is a death, and by now we have suffered a thousand of them. So, there is a place to grieve. This is the place. Now is the time. Things are not as they should be. So, we pray a worthy Advent prayer, “Come Lord Jesus. Heal and restore what has been lost, as you have promised.”
I am comforted by the words of the prophet Isaiah who speaks of the coming Messiah, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”. We don’t carry these feelings, which come at strange times, all on our own, or at all. Jesus carries what is too much for us, and what we do not understand. (And by the middle of the night, when I am still awake, thinking about all this, I realize I do not have to understand.) It is enough that Jesus is here to relieve the weight. “By his wounds, we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:4-6).
I will finish my tree trimming tonight, after the dinner dishes are put away, when I turn the lights down low again and play my music. I will take the last ornaments – some shiny, some priceless in their imperfection – and place them on the tree. They have become my Advent offering. Each one is an emptying of myself, placed on the altar, a sacrament of my best effort, my good intentions, the best I could give with what I knew, all that I had at the time. I offer it all to the Lord. Even now I can see how rich and lustrous the tree looks. The last few ornaments in the box will finish the task, and I already know I will take great pleasure in the mix-matched, convoluted, assortment of decorations. This is my beautiful life.
Isn’t this how it always is with Jesus? In the emptying out, there is a fullness. Though in the moment there may be sadness, there is also a joy. Joy in the midst. Light in the darkness. Life out of death. Only Jesus can do that. Come Lord Jesus. Come in the midst of it all.