O Come O Come Emmanuel

It's the first Christmas since my mom went home to be with Jesus after a lightning-fast battle with a cancer so aggressive it had spread to her brain before it was even detected. Many things about this season are challenging -- planning family dinners without her being there, putting up the tree (which we always did together), and picking through our stockings that she so thoughtfully stuffed the night before. 

We've worked hard to maintain the joyfulness of many traditions in this season. We still decorated cookies, we still put up the tree, we'll still gather in the living room tonight to read The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey, and it will be sweet. In fact, the birth of Christ is even sweeter this year. I have come to treasure the incarnation -- God being flesh and dwelling among us -- more than ever before amidst a year filled with so much heartbreak. 

I find, however, absolutely no solace in the empty lyrics of secular Christmas music. In fact, I can't stand it. I'm usually not grinchlike in my Christmas listenings -- I can bop to a little Mariah Carey and Jingle Bell Rock. But this year has been different. The meaninglessness is repulsive to me. Joe and I had The Polar Express soundtrack playing on our way home from counseling last week. We reflected on the lyrics of Josh Groban's "Believe," and I could hardly handle the vagueness. 

The chorus sings this:

Believe in what you feel insideAnd give your dreams the wings to flyYou have everything you needIf you just believe
"Believe what?" Joe asked when the song was over. These lyrics give nothing concrete to hold onto. For the past four months, we've had to do everything possible to reject what we feel inside -- the despair, the anger, the anxiety, the fear, and we have had to desperately cling to a very real, very near Jesus, who is the only reason we have everything we need. 

I punched the CD to silent. "Yeah, I can't do this." I was finding this to be true of so much surrounding the secular Christmas culture. Lyrics were either vague and empty, or masked with so much holly jolly jingle fluff that marred my season of grieving.

We queued up Spotify and the first song that came on was O Come O Come Emmanuel. My frustrated heart was immediately put to ease -- the first verse reads,

O Come O Come Emmanuel
and ransom captive Israel
that mourns in lonely exile here 
until the Son of God appear.

At long last! A song so deeply aware of suffering yet bursting with an answer to that suffering! Secular Christmas-ism would have no part of words like ransom, captive, mourns, and lonely in their carols. But I absolutely love that Christians can recognize it -- and not just recognize it, but rejoice in it! Because Christ DID appear, and that changes everything. 

Mourning in lonely exile feels exactly like what I've been doing -- what we've all been doing this year. And that would be hopeless and not worth singing about -- until the Son of God appears, and is born to be near to the broken-hearted, to grow and perform miracles and comfort mourning people, to carry His cross, to die and then rise, so that He will one day return to end our suffering forever. 

This is the reason to rejoice. It is concrete, authentic, bursting with hope. It has none of the foggy vagueness of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," which simply sings, "Let your heart be light -- next year all your troubles will be out of sight." In a fallen world marked by sin, strife, sickness, and suffering, I just find that hard to believe. In fact, it seems like many of our troubles are compounding from one year to the next, and next year is an election year, and my mom will still be gone...you get the point. 

Without Jesus, our troubles will abound. Even with Jesus, suffering is nearly a guarantee until He calls us home. After all, the world is broken. But we don't have to be in this brokenness alone:
Emmanuel shall come to thee O Israel! 

Jesus came to be with us, and He will come again! Let's sing about the hard stuff, and celebrate the true spirit of Christmas -- not some commercialized fluff with presents and lights, but a Savior born to ransom lonely, mourning captives like me. That's what Christmas is all about!

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