Celebration Friday

I don't know what it is about the holidays? That ache and longing that somehow go hand and hand with Christmas.  There's so much anticipation, celebration, and connecting. Yet still, there is equally as much waiting, sorrow, disappointment, and the many tensions that come with the "not yet" of heaven.

I hold these tensions ever so tenderly.

These stirrings I cup in the palm of my barely open hand, leave me sad and aching for resolution.

I am coming off a break up. And it hurts.  Hope deferred makes the heart sick. I know what King Solomon meant.

Oh Lord, meet me here. In the deep gratitude and tender anguish of that inmost heart place.

I cup the joys of friends and family who are loving me here.

I hold out my hands a little bit more. Here Lord, yes here, come for me. Remind me of your love and goodness.  I need your grace.

I wonder why? Why it is always that holy tension of joy and sorrow, hope and disappointment, the gift and the laying down?

And Christmas only seems to heighten it.

The lights of the little tree twinkle h o p e.  Not hope of an outcome, though there is that, but hope of a  S a v i o r  who knows me. Knows the path. Knows where the story is going.  Knows what it's like.

A personal God.

A God who dwelt among us.

A God who chooses to reside within that inmost place.

A God who knows what it's like to ache, wait, long, knows the cost and paid it for our redemption.

I celebrate him, even when it hurts.  Even when I don't understand.  Even when He says wait.

I  c e l e b r a t e Him.