Clouds Over Christmas

I just dropped off a Christmas poinsettia at a friend's house - she's getting home from the hospital today. Her husband died of cancer last week while she was laid up with back surgery. For her, I guess the words "Merry Christmas" will sound kind of hollow.

Of course, she's not alone this Christmas. In many families each Christmas, there's someone missing around the table. In just the past few weeks, my wife and I have had ten friends die. There are clouds over Christmas this year. For us. And especially for the families of those who are gone.

Grief and sadness, mixed with "joy to the world" and "happy holidays" - it's a bittersweet cup, at best.

Still, there is, as was announced that first Christmas, "good news of great joy" - even for those who are walking through "the valley of the shadow of death" (Psalm 23:4). Maybe especially for them.

Not long before Jesus was born, God sent this prophecy: "The rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living...in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace" (Luke 1:78-79). Some 700 years before, the prophet Isaiah said, as He prophesied Messiah's birth, "On those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned" (Isaiah 9:6; 9:1).

It is for those very people in the "land of the shadow" that Jesus came that first Christmas. Because we all take our turn there. When the days run out for someone we love. Or for us. Everyone has a last Christmas. Few of us know which one that will be.

But that's why Christmas is such good news. Because Jesus came to illuminate those clouds and shine the light of heaven on the darkest corridor of all. He walked out of His grave to prove there is life beyond the funeral. Not some religious speculation. Living proof. His Light has illuminated the mysterious darkness called death and shown us a heaven beyond.

But it took Him carrying His cross into that darkness and absorbing all the hell for all my sin. Jesus died so all of us God-disobeyers could, as He said, "cross over from death to life" (John 5:24). Death is an abyss of total darkness if we have to face it with our sins unforgiven. Because "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 3:23) - forever death, as in eternal separation from a totally holy God.

But - here's the hallelujah part - "God sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him" (1 John 4:9). Death penalty paid. Death's power shattered. Now all death can do for those who belong to Jesus is send them Home. Because of Jesus, death can't end a relationship between Jesus-followers; it can only interrupt it. There's a Reunion coming!

So, in the words of the immortal 23rd Psalm, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me."

Darkness has lost. The Light has won.

Merry Christmas.