"Blue Christmas"

Some of you may be wondering why I haven’t devoted a blog to the Christmas season yet.  After all, in previous years of this blog most, if not all, of December’s posts had a Christmas theme.  While the Christmas content is still coming later, this year is different.  This year is painful.  In fact, I wish I could go to sleep, wake up the next morning, and have it magically be January of 2016.  It’s difficult to walk out these days leading up to Christmas because my dad is no longer with us.

It’s difficult for several reasons, but let me give you just one example: my father loved Christmas and he loved music (as a matter of fact he even wrote his own Christmas song).  Thus it is not easy to hear Christmas music.  Which, of course, presents a problem: trying to avoid hearing Christmas music is nearly impossible as it is everywhere at this time of year.  One of the songs that I find myself resonating with is Elvis Presley’s song “Blue Christmas.”  He sings about how he will have a “blue Christmas” without his loved one.  Similarly, it will be a blue Christmas for me without my dad.

Check out this passage from the Bible: “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.  They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).  Most know these words, or at least that last phrase “Great is Your faithfulness.”  But not everyone knows that the book of Lamentations is the prophet Jeremiah lamenting the extremely difficult circumstances God had permitted.  Jeremiah is in the midst of intense pain, sorrow, and heartache.  For example, consider how just a few verses earlier, he says that God has “made me walk in darkness and not light” (Lamentations 3:2).  In verse 5, he says that God has “surrounded me with bitterness and woe.”  Verse 17: “You [God] have moved my soul far from peace; I have forgotten prosperity.”

But then in verse 21, his tune changes; he says, “This I recall to mind, therefore I have hope.”  He goes on to say what I’ve already cited in verses 22 and 23.  Context is crucial in the Bible.  The context of the monumental statement of God’s faithfulness is that, even in the midst of this intensely emotional, gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, agonizing pain, Jeremiah can still honestly declare that God is faithful.  I can say the same thing for myself.  Even though this is a “blue Christmas” God has never ceased to be faithful to me.  Great is His faithfulness!

Kevin