Focus on the Family Article by my Lovely Friend!!

Hopes, Fears and Longing at Christmas
by Ivette Alegria on 12/22/2012 at 2:47 PM

“Baby, all I want for Christmas is you.” —Mariah Carey

I was in my teens when I begged my mom to buy me the now played out Mariah Carey Christmas CD. She consented to the purchase so long as she could take a Sharpie to any less than modest album artwork. With that agreement made, I was free to wail along to Mariah’s lovesick Christmas carols
at the push of a button.

Every year I’d sigh, “She just gets me. All I want for Christmas is….” you can finish the stanza, I’m sure. I hoped fervently that next year the songs would no longer ring true, and I’d have someone special to share the most romantic time of the year with.

I don’t know when and how Christmas became the most romantic time of the year, but a cursory glance at the channel guide on TV makes it clear that I wasn’t alone in missing my certain someone most at Christmastime. 

Thankfully, I have outgrown teen angst. Even so, Christmas marks the passage of time. Even with my Mariah Carey days behind me, I can’t help but wonder if maybe next year I’ll have someone beside me to enjoy my wonderful, loud, loving family with, and if maybe my grandparents will hold on to life long enough to hold one of my babies, too.

Or maybe not.

I find grace and fuel for patience in this season of unknown by recognizing that my unfulfilled longings are not in vain, nor are they more hurtful than those of others. Once I am married I will trade these longings for another. Things on this side of eternity have yet to be made right, and so our longings follow us.

“Long lay the world in sin and error pining ‘til He appeared and the soul felt its worth.” —O, Holy Night

We will each be touched to varying degrees by the brokenness unleashed by the Fall. There are no loopholes in this. All of my married friends suffer. All of my single friends suffer. Childless friends suffer, and friends with children suffer. This isn’t cause for gloom. For each unique point of suffering there is also a correlating joy, but as my friend who has a beautiful marriage and a precious daughter simply put it, “It’s still life.”

That said, as singles longing to enter the one relationship tasked with mirroring Christ’s great love for the church, Christmas can be a time of subtle suffering not experienced by others. Christmas celebrations revolve around family and children. Babies and couples grace Christmas cards.
Christmas songs croon about keeping warm with lovers. Christmas cheer is not entirely withheld from us, but these particulars tend to fan the flames of longing more sharply.

As much as I might desire to participate in those sweet aspects of the season, an honest look reminds me they have little to do with Christ’s birth.

You see, Advent is all about longing. It’s about waiting. It’s about hopes and fears.

“The hopes and fears of all the years are met in you tonight…” —O Little Town of Bethlehem

In a recent conversation with Dr. Del Tacket, he reminded us about the silence between Malachi and Matthew. The wondrous prophecies of the Messiah were proclaimed and then were followed by centuries of silence. Centuries of waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting ... until at last He appeared, and history was never the same.

As my younger brother once said, “The incarnation is just the biggest deal.” It really is. We tend to make Christmas all about Easter, and of course they are intrinsically woven together. But the incarnation is the biggest deal because God became man not only to ransom us from the curse of sin, but also to know us. To embody the God who sees (Genesis 16:13); to be the friend who weeps alongside us (John 11: 33-35); to be misunderstood, betrayed, alone, reviled for us. He came as a vulnerable infant so that we might have a high priest who sympathizes with our weakness, temptation, suffering at every point yet without succumbing to sin (Hebrews 4:15). How humbling. How hope giving! 

If Advent is about longing and feeling the brokenness of life acutely, Christmas is about the Savior who alone satisfies that longing and heals that brokenness. It’s a time to allow the longings to propel us to Christ and bask in the enough and more-than enough nature of God’s love.

“O tidings of comfort and joy…” —God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

“I have told you these things, so that in me you might have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). In Jesus’ words to His beloved disciples He tells them plainly: This world is going to disappoint you, but this isn’t the end of the story. I have conquered the pain and suffering that this world will bring your way. You can find peace in Me. This isn’t trite positivity, friends. If it feels this way, I can only pray that you will encounter anew the life giving power of God’s presence and the tangible force of His comfort and joy.

“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” —Johan Sebastian Bach

My other favorite Christmas CD in my teens was Amy Grant’s Home for Christmas album. Among many familiar favorites, it contained the classical piece “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” by Bach. Its Celtic melody would set my feet dancing. It embodied joyful celebration.

The German verse translated reveals its author has encountered heartbreak, “Jesus remains my joy, my heart's comfort and essence, Jesus resists all suffering, He is my life's strength, my eye's desire and sun, my soul's love and joy; so will I not leave Jesus." The title aptly captures the depth of this truth. Jesus is the joy of man’s desiring; the joy in our longings. Even when earthly hopes are satisfied, it is He who is truly, “our soul’s love and joy.”

Wherever you’re at this Christmas, allow your longings to testify to your need for a Savior and join the Psalmist in remembering the One who remembers you, “O, Lord all of my longing is before You; And my sighing is not hidden from you” (Psalm 38:9). Your sighs are not hidden from Him. He came near. He did not stay silent. He took on flesh to be your Immanuel. This is joyous news. This is enough cause to celebrate with abandon this holiday. 

Sacrifice of Praise

 My parents became Christians when I was around 5 years old. And a song I learned way back then  popped into my head a couple of days ago & it's so comforting - "We bring the sacrifice of praise unto the house of the Lord / And we offer up to you the sacrifices of thanksgiving / And we offer up to you the sacrifices of joy"


So timely as I'm learning to choose joy and praise Him when things are challenging. I love that the words I sang as a child are now full with meaning and ministering to my heart. I think of this song as I open my Bible or sing a worship song when a discouraging thought or worry tempts me to lose my focus. Truth and praise makes our enemy shudder and flee. My battle for joy gets shorter the faster I turn to Him and praise His name.

Another song I learned when I was little went like this, "He gave me beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that we might be trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified."

I don't really think much about God being glorified in my suffering, but I know that He is when I cast my burdens on Him and praise in the midst of the storms of life.

Oil of Cheerfulness

I'm really being challenged lately to fight for joy in the midst of my circumstances, so this hit home for me. ~ Jen

Streams in the Desert excerpt:

"As God's chosen people...clothe yourselves with...kindness." ~ Colossians 3:12

There is an old story of an elderly man who always carried a little can of oil with him everywhere he went, and when he would go through a door that squeaked, he would squirt a little oil on the hinges. If he encountered a gate that was hard to open, he would oil the latch. And so he went through life, lubricating all the difficult places, making it easier for all those who came after him. People called the man eccentric, strange, and crazy, but he went steadily on, often refilling his can of oil when it was nearly empty; and oiling all the difficult places he found.

In this world, there are many lives that painfully creak and grate as they go about their daily work. Often it seems that nothing goes right with them and they need lubricating with "the oil of joy" (Psalm 45:7), gentleness, or thoughtfulness.

Do you carry your own can of oil with you? Are you ready with your oil of helpfulness each morning? If you offer your oil to the person nearest you, it may just lubricate the entire day for him. Your oil of cheerfulness will mean more than you know to someone who is downhearted. Or the oil may be a word of encouragement to a person who is full of despair. Never fail to speak it, for our lives may touch others only once on the road of life, and then our paths may diverge, never to meet again.

The oil of kindness has worn the shaper, hard edges off many a sin-hardened life and left it soft and pliable, ready to receive the redeeming grace of the Savior. A pleasant word is a bright ray of sunshine on a saddened heart. Therefore give others the sunshine and tell Jesus the rest.

We cannot know the grief

That men may borrow;

We cannot see the souls

Storm-swept by sorrow;

But love can shine upon the way

Today, tomorrow;

Let us be kind.

Upon the wheel of pain so many weary lives are broken,

So may our love with tender words be spoken.

Let us be kind.

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Romans 12:10

No Matter What Happens to Us...

Thank you to Colleen for sharing this!! I need to read this daily. . .

Ruthless Trust: the Ragamuffin’s Path to God (excerpts from chapter 1, "The Way of Trust") by Brennan Manning

“Brennan, you don’t need any more insights into the faith,” [my spiritual director] observed. “You’ve got enough insights to last you three hundred years. The most urgent need in your life is to trust what you have received.”

That sounded simple enough. But his remark sparked a searing reexamination of my life, my ministry, and the authenticity of my relationship with God… The challenge to actually trust God forced me to deconstruct what I had spent my life constructing, to stop clutching what I was so afraid of losing. . . .and fearlessly to ask myself if I trusted Him.

Unwavering trust is a rare and precious thing because it often demands a degree of courage that borders on the heroic. When the shadow of Jesus’ cross falls across our lives in the form of failure, rejection, abandonment, betrayal, unemployment, loneliness, depression, the loss of a loved one; when we are deaf to everything but the shriek of our own pain; when the world around us suddenly seems a hostile, menacing place—at those times we may cry out in anguish, “How could a loving God permit this to happen?” At such moments the seeds of distrust are sown. It requires heroic courage to trust in the love of God no matter what happens to us.

When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh went to work for three months. . . .in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer as to how best to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Theresa. She asked, “And what can I do for you?” Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him.

“What do you want me to pray for?” she asked.

“Pray that I have clarity.”

She said firmly, “No, I will not do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

“We ourselves have known and put our trust in God’s love toward ourselves” (1 John 4:16). Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father’s active goodness and unrestricted love.

We often presume that trust will dispel the confusion, illuminate the darkness, vanquish the uncertainty, and redeem the times. But the crowd of witnesses in Hebrews 11 testifies that this is not the case. Our trust does not bring final clarity on this earth. It does not still the chaos or dull the pain or provide a crutch. When all else is unclear, the heart of trust says, as Jesus did on the cross, “Into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46).

The decisive (or what I call the second) conversion from mistrust to trust—a conversion that must be renewed daily—is the moment of sovereign deliverance from the warehouse of worry.

The basic premise of biblical trust is the conviction that God wants us to grow, to unfold, and to experience fullness of life. However, this kind of trust is acquired only gradually and most often through a series of crises and trials. Through the indescribable anguish on Mount Moriah with his son Isaac, Abraham learned that the God who had called him to hope against hope was eminently reliable and that the only thing expected of him was unconditional trust.

The story of salvation-history indicates that without exception trust must be purified in the crucible of trial. David, the most beloved figure of Jewish history, was no stranger to terror, loneliness, failure, and even sinister plots to destroy him; yet he ravished the heart of God with his unwavering trust.

“When I am most afraid, I put my trust in you; in God whose word I praise, in God I put my trust, fearing nothing; what can men do to me?” (Ps. 56:3-4).

“My trust in God never wavers” (Ps. 26:1).

“He rescued me, since he loves me” (Ps. 18:19).

“But I for my part rely on your love, O Lord” (Ps. 13:5).

“Put your trust in Yahweh, be strong, let your heart be bold, put your trust in Yahweh” (Ps. 27:14).

“Happy the man who puts his trust in Yahweh” (Ps. 40:4).

“I mean to thank you constantly for doing what you did, and put my trust in your name, that is so full of kindness, in the presence of those who love you” (Ps. 52:9).

Behold the splendor of a human heart which trusts that it is loved!

Uncompromising trust in the love of God inspires us to thank God for the spiritual darkness that envelops us, for the loss of income, for the nagging arthritis that is so painful, and to pray from the heart, “Abba, into your hands I entrust my body, mind, and spirit and this entire day—morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Whatever you want of me, I want of me, falling into you and trusting in you in the midst of my life. Into your heart I entrust my heart, feeble, distracted, insecure, uncertain. Abba, unto you I abandon myself in Jesus our Lord. Amen.”

Effect of Kindness on the Body

I just finished a book called Aspire by Kevin Hall and a section that really amazed me was titled: A Garment of Praise:

"Said the poet Maya Angelou, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

In his bestselling book The Power of Intention, Wayne Dyer writes about the effect of kindness on the human body. Scientists who studied the brain activity of individuals as they performed an act of kindness for another found increased levels of serotonin, the chemical the brain produces to make you feel good and the common ingredient in antidepressant medication. That wasn't all they found. In those receiving the acts of kindness, researchers recorded the same amount of serotonin as that found in those giving the service. It was further determined that even those observing the acts of kindness produced the same amount of serotonin.

Inspiring environments are contagious. Few things feel more blissful that emerging from cold into warmth. When we inspire and praise others, it is as if we are bringing them out of the cold and wrapping them in a warm "garment of praise."

There is a scene indelibly imprinted on my mind. I was bicycling late one night through Doheny State Park, a stretch of beach of the Pacific with picnic benches and fire pits. At one of these sites a family was gathered to celebrate the birthday of a young boy. A roaring fire lit up the faces of a dozen or so family members as they stood in a circle. In the center of them was a birthday cake emblazoned with candles. They my gaze fell to the focal point of everyone's attention and admiration: the birthday boy. His face was aglow, lit up like the candles on his cake and the embers burning in the bonfire. There was no mistaking that look. It was one of pure, unadulterated joy and affirmation. I kept looking back as I pedaled away, my own heart warmed as if I were around that fire myself and part of that birthday celebration.

The word "praise" comes from the Old French "preiser" which means price or value. When we praise others, we add value to them, to their lives, to their dreams. We attach a high price to their efforts and purpose. "

I kept thinking of this part of the book as I was making little gifts for my coworkers today. Few things make me as joyful as giving gifts - whether those gifts are handmade, a random act of kindness, words of sincere encouragement, making someone laugh (such a gift for the soul!) or something I just knew a friend would love. Praying that you, dear readers, would be blessed by giving and receiving kindness this week.

The Christmas Challenge / Fast

This excerpt is from Streams in the Desert & reminds me of my mom - she has always been a faithful example of spending time in solitude before the Lord. The results of that in her life are truly incredible. It makes a difference in the kind of wife and mother she is for her family. I've always admired that about her.

I know, Christmas is definitely the hardest time of year to carve out time for solitude! My mom challenged me the other day to fast from Facebook and Pinterest (all of those little minutes add up to quite a chunk of time!) and spend that time with Jesus. 

"Your life will be transformed in a month of doing that," she said confidently. 

I believe that & am longing for transformation - for more of Jesus & a life that brings Him glory. So, I might not get to all the Christmas crafts I had planned - who cares?? The best gift I can give my family is to spend more time with God, because you can't help but become a better sister, daughter, friend, etc. when you spend time with Him. 

Anyway, here's what I read that stood out to me and blessed me this morning ~

"He went up on the mountainside by Himself." Matthew 14:23

One of the blessings of the old time Sabbath day was the calmness, restfulness and hold peace that came from having a time of quiet solitude away from the world. There is a special strength that is born in solitude. 

Strength is found not is busyness and noise, but in quietness. 

The one things we need today more than anything else is to spend time alone with our Lord, sitting at His feet in the sacred privacy of His blessed presence. Oh, how we need to reclaim the lost art of meditation! Oh, how we need "the secret place" (Ps. 91:1) as part of our lifestyle! Oh, how we need the power that comes from waiting upon God!"