12/25/2022
-A Reflection for December 2022-
Sometimes in choral music there is an element of delicate beauty that a composer will choose to add to the score. As the 4-part harmony is beautifully woven together and the voices blend creating such wonderful music, the composer writes another line to be sung or played above the others. It’s called an obbligato, meaning “something brilliant and over all the rest.”
Walking through Advent and toward Christmas bearing the grief of loss is so difficult. We hear the Christmas carols and want to be “Merry”, but our spirits and our voices cannot match the happy, joyful melody. There is a dissonant obbligato playing in our hearts over the music. It is our grief. It plays over and through all the moments of the season. But this dissonance brings a sacred awareness to us. We hear this off-tune ache because we have loved another and been loved and we are grieving their death. No matter how long or short the life, they mattered and will always matter.
We so deeply desire to look for the light of God’s promise. We lean in and out of those joyous carols sometimes only hearing our own sadness and feeling the darkness of loss. In my faith tradition, Christmas points me to an eternal hope an answer to the dissonance.
When Jesus was born, the world was in darkness. The prophet Isaiah foretold of this great light coming into the world. Even the journey of the Kings from the East, who are following a starry, prophetic message, follow it to the Christ Child.
The darkness often seems to be too powerful, too complete. But I have a word for us all. The STAR still shines. The light of God’s love- even in our grief, even in our hurt, even in our thin hope, the STAR still shines. It points us to a small child and God’s great answering to the darkness.
ISAIAH 9.2 declares, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light, for those living in the land of the shadow of death, a LIGHT HAS DAWNED!”
Like the shepherds and the Kings from the east, we do not make this journey alone. For if we love others, we will face grief. All of us.
It feels like yesterday, on that Christmas day when my family was gathered around my father, who was at the end of his life and hearing his own angel’s song. We were with him as others were gathered with their families’ opening presents, singing carols, or enjoying a banquet. Those moments became hours as we waited for a different, eternal miracle. We were like shepherds keeping watch in the midst of a Silent night that was becoming a holy day. There in the hospital room we didn’t have “presents” we had “presence.” The presence of a holy God whose love is beyond human comprehension- whose peace passes all human understanding.
It was not just the hope of “Good News”. He believed his whole life and now in the thin place between here and there- he saw it. In the arms of angels that only he could see, he reached for it. HE found it.
In the years that followed, the Christmas season was poignant and powerful for me. So, I decided to be at the hospital and offer my pastoral care to those patients who were hospitalized and to those family, nurses, staff who were caring for them on Christmas eve and Christmas day. And time after time, I would see the light of God’s mercy shining into those darkening moments- with hope for an eternal answer, with hope for an enduring love and memory. I would know the STAR still shines.
So, what does it mean that the STAR still shines?
I know your struggles with sacred and holy days will not suddenly end. Your powerful pain of loss will not disappear. But the music that flows in and above your grief is a new song. The melody rises and reminds us that a STAR still shines in this night of hope. It will forever shine- leading us to the Christ, the LORD.
So, when the darkness seems too strong- and our grief too heavy, look for the STAR, the hope and the light of the world, Jesus. His STAR still shines.
Now, people who walk in the shadow of grief, Go into this night, Go into the LOVE and GRACE of God. GO! Go in PEACE
AMEN
We
AS I pondered the privilege of coming to this gathering, sharing these moments
