As I scroll through Odyssey and read through the articles, about dating, about relationships, about stress over final exams, about "catching feels" or not, I read longing on the page, hopes and despair scrawled between the words.
The hopes and fears of our generation all passionately penned (or typed) on this website.
We hope for fairytale relationships, we hope for perfect families, for popularity and acceptance, for nice gifts under our trees, for the fulfillment of all our desires. We begin this life with all our sunrises ahead of us, with dreams and wonder dancing on the horizon, but dark clouds often cloud the sky and rain on our hopes. But as long as there is life in us, there is a shred of hope in us. Our heart's rise for the Christmas season. We hope for a better life, even when we are at the end of our wits.
There's a reason for that. It's the desperate rebel yell of our broken souls, crafted for eternity and purpose, not merely emptiness and material things, not merely present for this life.
Truth is, there's an answer, a resolution to all our hopes, a fulfillment to all our questions, to that dissatisfaction and gnawing longing in our lives for something more.
Way back when, an English chap named C.S. Lewis wrote an autobiography of his "mind life," kind of.
He entitled it, "Surprised by Joy."
His definition of joy didn't really have anything to do with happiness, but it had a heck of a lot to do with our longings, our sublime moments, our loves that make our hearts sing like songbirds in April, that make our hearts ache for more.
His joys, his longings pointed him to the fact that maybe there is something more than our brief existence on this spinning chunk of rock.
“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” -C.S. Lewis
We were made for a relationship with God, with Jesus Christ.
And nothing else will do to satisfy us.
We can numb or distract the pain. We cannot fill our hearts.
We were made for eternity, crafted for good, for wonder, for awe over mountain meadows, for a life in joyful, loving service to those around us that overflows from God's great love for us.
Only sin has stained us. Jesus came that we might be white as snow, to redeem us and restore human relationship with the Father, to give us eternity in heaven.
This is our Hope-
"the thing with wings, that sings!"
In a lost and broken world, those who have Christ must overflow with His love, we must live in thanks and giving out of the love we have received. How can it not be our joy to be "broken bread" when Christ was broken for us? To be the whimsical and strange, the misfits who hope even in darkness, because the light on our horizon doesn't dim. He walks beside us.
May our desires lead us to Him instead of to ourselves and self-pity.
Chosen.
Rescued.
Redeemed.
Sons and daughters.
Beautiful.
White as snow.
These are the names God calls us. His kingdom come, His will be done through us that more and more will be called sons and daughters of God, that we may charge through the gates of heaven running with laughing, saved souls of friends and family and strangers. May every hard and broken story may be turned to joy and glory. May we our spirits float with hope year round, not merely at Christmas, not merely in the good times.
May we take our last, ragged gasp of breath in this world knowing we "lived given" and lived grateful as Ann Voskamp says, that we were the hands of feet of Jesus to others.
We come into this world deserving not a thing. We are entitled to NOTHING. Yet we have been given the wild beauty this planet, of relationship, of Jesus. Glory be to the God from whom all blessings flow.
“The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”-Tim Keller
Christmas isn't merry without Christ. It's just mas.
Come and draw from the well of living water. Thirst and despair no longer.
This life isn't just dust and pain and survival, for in it we are surprised by Joy, surprised by Jesus.