Everything's gonna be alright, I know.
It's the coldest time of winter,
And I shiver when I see the falling snow.
If we make it through December,
Got plans to be in a warmer town come summer time.
Maybe even California,
If we make it through December we'll be fine.
Merle Haggard. Man. He captured some hard-core-end-of-my-rope-blue-collar despair in that song. And it's a Christmas song. Well, he put it on his Christmas album. Along with "Bobby wants a puppy dog for Christmas." Merle Haggard actually has at least three Christmas LPs. That seems like a lot for him. Especially with titles like "Daddy won't be home again for Christmas." But I digress.
I don't mean to hate December. It's meant to be a happy time of year. And my little girl don't understand, why daddy can't afford no Christmas cheer.
Lots of people echo Haggard's sentiment that if we make it through December we'll be fine. At least we hope so. It's been a memorably difficult year for lots of people. I drove 8 hours round trip last week to attend the funeral of one of the most supportive and encouraging people I ever worked with in ministry. He got Covid-19 and left us shortly afterward.
Other people are hurting and it has no direct relationship to Covid. Covid probably exacerbates it. "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything" (James 1:2-4). James is addressing the reality that life is very often far from Christmas card perfect.
He characterizes these times as tests. The good thing about tests is that they're purposeful. "Take out a half sheet of paper and clear everything else from your desk." Those terrifying words from academia. To what end? We're going to see what's inside of you young man, young lady. That's what matters: what's inside of you?
I have known genuine despair in my life. Perhaps you have a well. I listened to Michael Card's album Poeima again recently. He has a song on their called "The Edge" about depression. It's disarmingly honest for a 90s CCM song.
I've found that as I travelled,
Through the inscape of my land,
That mountaintops make valleys in between.
And when that nameless sadness,
Like a cloud comes over me,
I look back on all the brightness I have seen.
Through the inscape of my land,
That mountaintops make valleys in between.
And when that nameless sadness,
Like a cloud comes over me,
I look back on all the brightness I have seen.
I can acknowledge brokenness in the world. I've known it on both sides of my Christian experience. I've known the disorienting trauma of having a leg kicked out from under the stool I was sitting on, leaving me flat of my back on the floor because of a failed relationship. Broken, humbled. I've known the struggle of persevering in Christian maturity when the template of my early life and challenges of my inner life seemed as if it would endlessly hem me in.
It's been very obvious to me lately that James' words about testing are absolutely essential in processing difficulty. I saw someone post yesterday about how grateful they were for a period of relative personal calm. Yikes. That's my thought. Don't count on that lasting. Lol. Difficult experiences come around regularly enough that at a point in our adult journey they shouldn't even surprise us anymore. But they're purposeful.
Romans 5:3-4, "We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation." The question for me to ponder when life is going sideways is this: is my hope in Christ apparent in those times? This is what passing the test looks like. Success is simply reflecting the reality of God's anchoring hope in our attitudes and behavior when it's really not easy to do so.
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