Oh, Jesus, Come

A prayer at 5 a.m. on Christmas Eve

Oh God, what is the true meaning of Christmas?

I ask this, lying awake in my bed on Christmas Eve morning, one hushed moment of stillness before the blur of it all begins: the celebrations, the feasting, the lights, the pretty paper, the carols, the extended family, the shiny new things, the hopes, the trying to make it special, the merry memory-making.

Yes, it is easy to get caught up in the trappings of Christmas. The obvious ones that are being sold to us—where we are focused more on the appearance of things, on the buying and selling, the going and going and going till we’re all used up. I have always longed to overcome this. To get to the deeper meaning.

This year, I feel that a curtain has been pulled back from my eyes, and I am seeing more than ever Christmas is about so much more. It is about the absolute hopelessness of man. It is the breakdown of the family. The helplessness you feel when someone you love is unreachable. Christmas has a way of revealing all of our failings in one grand, glorious moment. When we should be all gathered together around the hearth or piano—laughing, telling stories, singing songs of good cheer, and yet we find ourselves shut up and out in our own worlds, forming words in our minds of what we would say if only we had the opportune moment to speak them. Christmas is about brokenness. It is about our own love not being enough to save the ones we love. It is about heartbreak and sorrow, about empty spaces at the table. It is not only not about the beautiful things, it is about the hideous, dark depths of our own human depravity.

I have wished it was simple like it was when I was a child. But I know the holidays were beautiful because of love that shielded me from knowing or understanding these things so long ago. There were sorrows just outside the glowing edges of my memories that were breaking the hearts of those who loved me.

Christmas is the intersection of all our hopes and hopelessness. Knowing that there is something beautiful that we were meant to know and enjoy, but falling short and failing to grasp it. It is about longing. It is a remembering, a reawakening of the promise that Jesus came and is coming. He was born into a hopeless, helpless world. He was born into our depravity. Into the questions we cannot answer. Into the needs that swallow us whole. He was born into our sorrows. Into the empty spaces in our lives. Into the brokenness, the darkness, the cold and bitter chill of the human condition.

So, lying awake at 5 a.m. on Christmas Eve, I cry with all my heart, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” Come into every longing, every hope, every hopeless situation. Come into the darkness, the rooms that are locked and bolted shut. Come into this family. Into all the places where the threads that stitch us together are unraveling. Come into my helplessness. Into the loss and loneliness. Come into my inability to save myself. Save me. Save us, O God.

The story is still being told in our hearts. The true meaning of Christmas is Jesus coming to our world, making a way for us when we had no hope. He is setting things in motion that we can not yet even being to think or imagine, making a way before us, beginning secret histories that will one day reveal his great love for us and the reassurance that he has never left or forsaken us. He still comes. He is one breath and prayer away. One cry in the middle of the night.

Oh, Jesus, come.

I will keep this prayer in my heart and let it be a lighted candle. I will breathe in the beauty all around me, enter into it as fully as I know how. I will endeavor to make the memories of children alight with it. To give love that is beyond my own strength and understanding. To let the glow of God’s love illuminate the days before me. To bring warmth and radiant light. And when I feel myself slipping into despair for the dark world around me, I will breathe the prayer and fan the little flame to life.

Oh, Jesus, come.

Merry Christmas, dear friends. May your days be filled with the light and hope of Christ. Sending you a new song of Randy’s that makes me cry. I think it is one of the most beautiful Christmas songs I’ve ever heard.

Love from our family to yours.

Mackenzie