December 2020. Remember that dark Christmas? It was something. And while we have collectively, hopefully rounded a corner on the pandemic, I bet there are some of us who are looking down the tunnel of a dark, hard end of the year.
But, He came. Christ’s arrival into the world to live among and walk beside those who needed Him so deeply almost magnifies just how broken this world is. Things in this life are so shattered it took the Lord Himself stepping in.
Not from afar, but up close.
Below is a piece I posted in December 2020 (originally publish date was December 13, 2020). If the brokenness of this fallen world weighs heavy on your shoulders, take heart. He came to redeem the broken.
“This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
Luke 2:12
At the end of this year – this hard, painful, stretched to the edges year – I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling…things.
Growth? Nope. Improved in some area of life? Uh, no. Restored and rested with the satisfaction of good work under my belt? I wish.
Exhausted? Spent? Confused? Anxious? Overwhelmed by oh so many decisions with no good options?
Yeah, that’s more like it.
Parenting school-aged children, working in a school, navigating life wearing a face covering, worrying about family members (ahem…that’s you, mom and dad, every time you take that extra trip to Publix), disappointment over all the things we cannot look forward to right now, and trying to maintain some sort of social connection with friends.
Add to this, the passing of my absolute favorite human, and this year has truly been the worst.
Never before have I hit a year end with this degree of emotional and physical fatigue. We’re at the point where commenting on just how bad 2020 has been is cliché, so I know that I’m not alone here.
The brokenness of our world is everywhere I look. And while it has always been this degree of fragmented, it is as if 2020 has shone a spotlight on every flaw and crack. If I have learned anything this year, it is that we are, more than ever before, collectively in need of things that this world cannot provide.
In this year of brokenness on display, the manger feels more profound than ever.
Sanctification to mend the world started in a dirty cave in a town with only generational significance to an occupied nation. Their Lord had been silent for over 400 years, and they were ruled by the sole superpower characterized by brutality and devotion to mythical gods. Illness was rampant and poverty the norm.
And yet he came.
There was no command to climb to him. No instruction to clean themselves up first or to get their lives in order. No list of demands to meet or problems to fix or sin to conquer. In fact, no movement toward him at all.
He came. All the way. To precisely where they were and met their fully broken selves.
There was nothing they could do to fix the brokenness. They, like we, I’m sure, tried to patch things up with glue from time to time. But, their human attempts to restore their own souls always fell short. And ours do, too.
He came all the way to us because there is nothing we can do to restore ourselves. No amount of striving. Or working. Or self-improving. Nothing we do from our own strength will fully heal the brokenness in us outside of personal relationship with him.
He came. To us. Not in spite of our brokenness, but because of it. The “sign to you” looked like nothing they’d expected in Messiah, but the “baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger” was exactly what they needed.
And in this year of brokenness magnified, God coming to meet us where we are – our hot mess, 2020 selves and all – feels like an even bigger gift than I have ever fully understood.
So, as we end this year – this year of hardship, grief, and angst – let’s remember he came to us. In the midst of the mess.
Emmanuel – God with us – meets us exactly where we are. And that’s where we can choose to lay all the hard edges of this most difficult year.
