New
It’s a sad paradox that the most wonderful time of the year can also stir up the most despair in people. For many, I know the season coincides with a past wound, but I’m also think pain is just made more acute when it’s contrasted with all the cheer around you.
What a visceral test of faith this disparity can be for the Christian. If I really trust that Immanuel has come down to reside with me, will I allow myself to be comforted by His presence in a pit more than any place else? And not just despite the fact I’m in a pit, but all the more because of it? The colder the darkness, the warmer His presence ought to be in the middle of it. I'm pretty sure that's how physics works.
I think that makes Christmas one of the better times to lean into afflictions, and to remind myself that His descent into the world was really not even half the journey.
I like how C.S. Lewis describes the incarnation in Miracles.
In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity… down to the very roots and seabed of the Nature He has created.
One may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to color and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing he went down to recover.
He has not come just to be present. He doesn’t intend to patch my wounds and ease the discomfort of the pit. I’m being retrieved and renewed:
For God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfilled humanity would have been… The greater the sin, the greater the mercy: the deeper the death the brighter the rebirth.
And if that’s true, it means the further down He has to go to sit with me, the more dramatic the ascent when everything’s made new. And it will be new. That much is strung through both testaments.
“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
Isaiah 43:18-19 ESV
“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness.
Isaiah 65:17-18 ESV
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new.”
Revelation 21:4-5 ESV
Remembering this makes me think I can sit in this pit for now, and can deal with the pain a little longer. He's enduring it with me too, and it won’t survive until morning anyway.