Reflection
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While Christmas brings positive vibes to a lot of people, the holiday season can be tough for many others. For some, it’s filled with pressure—to give gifts to loved ones when the budget doesn’t have room for that to happen. Or there’s the stress of knowing family members will be together who don’t always see eye to eye. Or maybe it’s a sad reminder of loved ones who are no longer here.
Christmastime can highlight for some what we all know too well—whether we feel it at Christmas or not—that things don’t always work out the way we think they should. We are hurt. People leave. Things break. The world bruises us. And when we go through those seasons—sometimes lengthy—we long for things to be better than they are. We ask questions like, Why did this have to happen? Why are they like that? How long is this going to last? Maybe you’re in one of those seasons now.
In a letter the apostle Paul wrote to Jesus followers living in Rome, he reminded them there’s a sense that everyone—and even everything—somehow knows this world falls short of what it could be… of what it should be. He says in Romans 8:
“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” In other words, until things are made right, there will be pain. But like an expectant mother, that pain will end one day. And after that pain, something new and beautiful begins.
The picture Paul is painting is one that says yes, there is pain now, but there won’t always be. There is a day that will come, a day when God completes his mission of restoring all of creation, when Jesus returns and all that’s wrong will be made right. Even our physical bodies will be restored. As he wrote in that same chapter: “We wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.”
So while there is pain, that pain comes with longing—longing for the day when we are united with Jesus, when things are made right, and when he reigns forever. That day will come.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank you that you are always with us, especially in the midst of difficulties. We ask for your help, your comfort, and your peace. But at the same time, we long for the day when all things will be restored to how they should be. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
