The 12 Days of ChristmasНамуна

Why It Hurts at Christmas

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Thus begins Charles Dickens’ "A Tale of Two Cities," written in the time of revolution. But he could have just as easily been talking about the time in which we live. Christ has already come in the flesh; but He has not yet made all things new. So, while it is the best of times, Christ is Lord; it is the worst of times, we still await His return.

Many of our great Christmas carols acknowledge our already-but-not-yet state. Isaac Watts wrote, “He comes to make his blessings known far as the curse is found.” And Edmund Sears in “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” said this: “Yet with the woes of sin and strife/The world has suffered long/Beneath the angel-strain have rolled/Two thousand years of wrong….”  Such a long time the world has waited!

One of the lesser-known carols that acknowledges the reality of humanity’s long wait is “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow wrote the words in 1868. Thirty-three years earlier, he had lost his first wife after a miscarriage. Seven years before he wrote his carol, his second wife burned to death when her dress caught on fire. Six years before Longfellow wrote it, his son was injured in the Civil War. And after that for obvious reasons, Longfellow found he could no longer create poetry. So he took a five-year break. But then he penned the carol we still sing—which includes these words:

And in despair I bowed my head;

“There is no peace on earth,” I said;

“For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Longfellow clung to hope that Christ will some day make all things new:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

These words come from a broken-hearted man holding on to the reality that the one who died a violent death for us all will someday return. And we look to Christ’s return because our current reality still sits lodged in the worst of times. The holidays are not all peace and love and hope and joy. What thorns still infest our ground!

In the medieval church, the four Sundays preceding Christmas focused on Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. One might think, “How morbid!” Yet consider that Christ is the Lord of all these—and that is something worth celebrating!  

As we look to the eastern horizon for the Son of Righteousness to again appear, we know He has issued the death warrant for evil, judgment, and death, and He is the risen Lord of heaven and earth. This King has promised He will wipe away every tear. And we hope against hope that He will do so soon. “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” 

Give thanks that a day is coming when Christ will make all things new. 

Photo credit: Sebastian Spindler, Unsplash; used with permission.