“Longing” is a predominant experience of the Christmas season.
Children long to unwrap presents. Grandparents long for their extended family to gather around the dining table. We all long to feel especially safe and loved during the Christmas season.
If you are like me, you find that Christmas also accentuates an inner longing that is difficult to define. We may attribute that longing to past holiday memories or blame it on the unrealistic ideals presented by advertising and media. Many attempt to fill this longing with Christmas activities or try to kill it with addictive behaviors.
I suppose this inner longing is why the opening lines of this familiar Christmas hymn have captured my attention this week:
Ancient Israel knew longing.
They had been longing for the promised Messiah for centuries, holding to the prophetic words recorded in Isaiah 7:14; “Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel (God with us).”
But we know that when He came, most did not accept Jesus as their Messiah. He didn’t meet their ideal of how the Messiah should act and speak. Their rejection kept them living in a “lonely exile” far worse than physical captivity. They were living in spiritual captivity.
They missed God’s plan to fulfill their longing.
Does God allow us to long, so we don’t miss His Gift?
What if our inner longing at Christmas is God’s way to draw our gaze far beyond the carols, lights, gifts, and gatherings to see again His provision through Jesus Christ? Reminding us that only He can touch that deepest place of our heart that cries out to be known and to be loved. Reminding us that, knowing Jesus as our Redeemer and Savior, we are hoping in anticipation for the full redemption of body, mind and spirit that will be ours when we are with Christ in eternity.
“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity…” (Titus 2: 13,14)
When we experience that deep inner longing, whether at Christmas or any other time of the year, God help us to make the courageous choice to live as those redeemed from the lonely exile of our souls, while we boldly long for what God has promised to yet provide for His children.
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