Beholding Advent Sadness
Like Charlie Brown, the season before Christmas can come with blue feelings – “I just feel depressed!” This season that is supposed to evoke great feelings of joy, gladness, hope, wonder, & awe also seems to evoke the opposite- feelings of sadness, grief, fear, loss, & loneliness. The memory of loved ones who have died in December or worse (at Christmas.) The anxiety of paying the bills or building the new dept coupled with disappointment over giving in to the “consumer pressure” one more year.
It is important to remember that “there was no room at the inn,” so sad to have a baby distanced from family and caregivers. That Mary’s first well wishers were smelly men of very low social position… So as for sadness – this week I am sad. So we hang “sadness” and “tears” on our Advent Garland and sit with loss, behold these feelings, and wait for light to penetrate and grow bright in our hearts again.
I must acknowledge that I am not a writer just a “stager of content” so here are a couple much more thoughtful reflections that have encouraged my heart (this post was composed Mon-Dec.17,2012):
http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/god-kept-out
“Those little Advent candles sure have a lot of darkness to overcome this year. I see them glowing from church windows and on TV, in homes and at midnight vigils, here in Dayton and in Sandy Hook. Their stubborn flames represent the divine promise that even the smallest light can chase away the shadows lurking in this world, that even in the darkest places, God can’t be kept out. ”
http://the-fog-blog.com/2012/12/17/when-will-it-end/
“I cannot believe that he is crying because of his own personal loss. Rather, I believe that Jesus, confronted with death and surrounded by unbelief, knows that these things are not God’s good will.”
The Online Advent Garland 