Struggling to make ends meet and tired from a year of disappointments and heartbreaks, Christmas in my mid-twenties was often a heavy-hearted affair. The Christmas lights and cookie decorating and the constant squeals of delight as relatives trickled in over the week made me sadder and sadder. Joy to the world didn’t seem to apply to me and the festivities of Christmas put into stark contrast the deep aches of my life: loneliness, weariness, and bitter disappointment.
As the years have rolled by, I have experienced many sad Christmases. Broken family relationships, illness and death, and even simply the exhausting toll of life in a cursed world can make the ringing of Christmas bells a painful sound. How are we supposed to celebrate with broken hearts? How do we sing carols from the pit?
It is, however, for this very reason that our God came. It is because of the curse of sin and death that God became man and dwelt among us. So, if you are grieving what is wrong in the world this year, here are a few things to consider, whether you trim your tree or leave the ornaments in boxes.
Christ Came To Save A Broken World
When Adam and Eve first sin in the Garden of Eden, God curses the ground (Gen. 3:17–19). The world that was once perfect is now corrupted, and sadness and sorrow enter. The consequences of that first transgression peal across a hurting world—humans toil and struggle, but their work is just “a striving after wind” (Eccl. 1:14). And death, the final enemy, comes for every last one of us. There is a hopelessness to this life that biblical authors know well. The psalmist laments the prosperity of the wicked (Ps. 73:1–15), as do Job and the prophet Jeremiah (Job 21:7–15, Jer. 12:1). The teacher of Ecclesiastes circles again and again the mystery of life’s riches and wisdom when their inevitable end is the grave (Eccl. 2:12–26).
This darkness and misery can feel suffocating, and yet we are told “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). Christ’s coming splits this darkness, his earthly ministry begins ushering in the heavenly kingdom—reversing the curse—and his death secures everlasting life and eternal healing for those who believe in his name.
Christ comes to heal, to bind up what is broken, to give rest to the weary, and to save those lost in darkness. If you feel wounded, broken, weary, or lost this Christmas season, know that Christ came for you. We rejoice at his birth because it is the dawn of our salvation, and given the reason for his coming, it is appropriate to rejoice through tears.
Christ Felt Our Sadness, Too
If you are grieving this Christmas, know that you are in good company. The psalmist cries up from the pit because his “soul is full of troubles” (Ps. 88:3), and Rachel weeps for her children because they are no more (Jer. 31:15–17). How many biblical figures put on sackcloth and ashes, or rent their clothing with tears?
It is beyond comprehension that the eternal and all-powerful God would become a human being and so experience the frailty and pain of our existence. He has “come to earth to taste our sadness,” as the hymn writer Charles Wesley puts it. Christ our King knows our suffering; he has felt our sorrow (Heb. 4:14–16). Jesus wept over the lostness of Jerusalem, longing to gather the people up in his wings (Luke 19:41, Matt. 23:37). He grieved when his cousin was beheaded (Matt. 14:12–13), and when his friend Lazarus died, he cried at his tomb, even though he knew he would raise him up moments later (John 11).
This Jesus weeps with you, too. Whatever loss or heartache you may be feeling, whatever restlessness or weariness possesses you, we have a God who hears our cries, who sent his Son to rescue us and his Spirit to comfort us. How beautiful that “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
Christ Has Something Better For You
When God cursed the ground, he also made a promise: he would send someone to crush the Serpent’s head, breaking the curse and defeating death (Gen. 3:15). And though the psalmist laments the comfort of the wicked, in the same psalm he recognizes that this promise of God is a much richer blessing.
You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.
To be taken up into glory is indeed the hope of every believer—a comforting promise when this life is bent beneath the weight of sorrow and loss. And there in glory, the prophet Isaiah describes, the Lord will prepare a great feast for those he loves, he will swallow up death in victory, and he will wipe away every tear (Is. 25:6–8). From Genesis to Revelation, we see glimmers of this promise, shadows of the kingdom to come.
Christmas is just a shadow. Glittering tinsel and warm pies, the soft glow of a tree and the familiar notes of those old tunes we love, even having everyone home for the holidays—though all of this is special, none of it is lasting. And none of it is why we commemorate December 25. For the Christian, the celebration of Christmas is the acknowledgment of a deeper joy, a greater hope. It is the celebration of sins forgiven and the curse conquered. It is a recognition of the grand promise of all of Scripture, which is fulfilled in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ:
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
