Advent with Empty Hands
Advent hasn’t yet begun and I already need a break. My weary heart longs for a rest but it’s the busiest (and supposedly jolliest) season of the year, and rest is hard to find. Don’t get me wrong: I love Christmas. This time of year with its brightly lit town squares, warm holiday drinks, and Christmas carols playing in stores is magical for me too. It’s just that my heart longs for more… and at the same time, for less.
Delicious treats, festive parties and carefully chosen gifts are good things, but after the death of a spouse, they can feel hollow. It’s hard to muster a smile and a jolly attitude when your heart is broken. And when regular days are exhausting, the holiday season can feel like an overwhelming marathon that starts at Thanksgiving and ends at New Years with a mess of decorations and already-forgotten toys that need to be put away. As grievers, we can wonder if this season has anything for us. Does Christmas only offer a distraction from sorrow and a break from work? Is it just an excuse to eat sugary treats and buy things that sparkle but will soon lose their luster?
I am grateful for the perspective of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who penned the following words in a letter to his fiance, from a Nazi prison during WWII:
“I think we’re going to have an exceptionally good Christmas. The very fact that every "outward circumstance precludes our making provision for it will show whether we can be content with what is truly essential. I used to be very fond of thinking up and buying presents, but now that we have nothing to give, the gift God gave us in the birth of Christ will seem all the more glorious; the emptier our hands, the better we understand what Luther meant by his dying words: ‘We’re beggars; it’s true.’ The poorer our quarters, the more clearly we perceive that our hearts should be Christ’s home on earth.”
Though my circumstances are nothing like Bonhoeffer’s, his words ring true in my heart. I first read them during a brutally difficult Christmas season. We’d received terrible news about my husband's health, our extended family was being fractured by resurfaced wounds and my marriage was strained. Life felt like it was falling to pieces. Though I had a comfortable home and gifts under my tree, my hands felt unbearably empty. Our “outward circumstances” had us barely hanging onto hope by a thread. That was the Christmas that I yearned most for the hope that Advent points us to.
In the church calendar, Advent is meant to stir longing in our hearts as we remember that the world was once without hope as God’s people waited for a Savior to come. Advent culminates in Christmas, when Jesus was born into our frailty and pain. In Jesus, God himself became weak, weary, and heavy laden, because we were inescapably so. He became a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3), submitting to a body that didn’t work as it should, the frustration of work that never ends, and the sorrow of losing loved ones to death.
But Advent points to more than the birth of Christ. Christmas was just the start of Jesus’ rescue mission that will culminate one day when he returns and “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Rev. 21:4)
So now, Advent is a time of longing, not just for beautiful gifts on Christmas morning, but for Christ himself. It’s meant to be a time when we cry out for God to come once again to make all things right. Advent recognizes the sorrows and brokenness of life and points us to the day when they will be no more and death will be destroyed. What wonderful news for our aching hearts.
As women who have lost husbands, we are well acquainted with grief, yet that is not the only sorrow we carry. We come from broken families, experience broken bodies and live in a broken world that sometimes seems to be tearing itself apart. At Christmas, we do our best to bring joy in the midst of sorrow to our kids, friends, and families as we decorate, bake, shop and travel, and it’s good. But it’s not enough.
When we feel weary and when the world’s attempt at joy falls flat, we are experiencing Advent as we are meant to. Our longing for more is a longing for Christ and a reminder that there are desires in our hearts that even Christmas can’t meet. And that desire, sweet friend, is good. Let it tug your heart closer to Jesus; the One who came and is coming again. He is the only One who can satisfy your soul.
In Christ Alone,
