Christmas 2020 Amidst Broken Dreams

Broken dreams? Should this be the focus of CandyceLand just a few days before Christmas? Well, yes, I believe so.  As I learned from GriefShare, Christmas is the "Sufferers Holiday"  because Jesus' birth marks the beginning of the end of suffering, pain, and broken dreams. It gives us the best reason ever to celebrate. Jesus was born in poverty and slept in a feeding trough, yet His humble birth leads to the death of all tragedies, hurts, tears, even to the death of death itself. 

But in the meantime, we live in the here and now on this side of heaven in 2020. While the future looks glorious, we do admit that some days it feels pretty bleak. Vaneetha Rendall Risner has written a wonderful article on how to reconcile this already/not yet life that we live. As a reminder, Vaneetha has the credentials for writing such an article - a firm and faithful believer and yet she has lived with immeasurable sorrows and physical trials since she was a very young girl. 

"Twenty-one surgeries (polio) by age thirteen. Years in the hospital. Verbal and physical bullying from schoolmates. Multiple miscarriages as a young wife. The death of a child (due to physician error). A debilitating progressive disease (now in≥ a wheelchair). Abandonment. Unwanted divorce." (From the back cover of her book The Scars That Have Shaped Me: How God Meets Us In Suffering.)

If you have time during this busiest of weeks, please read Vaneetha's perspective on this subject. And then reflect upon the following excerpt from "Joy To the World." Only with this solid hope of Christ's coming kingdom can we celebrate Christmas with the joy it deserves.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love

And wonders, wonders, of His love.