Tag: advent

When Christmas Hurts – Hope for the Lonely Heart.

(A Christmas Reflection)

Every year, the lights go up, the music turns on, and the world seems to lean hard into cheer. “Merry Christmas!” echoes from store speakers, greeting cards, and overcaffeinated morning show hosts. But for many, this season feels anything but merry.

If that’s you this year—if you’re sad, lonely, or walking through grief—this post is for you.

You’re Not Broken Because You’re Hurting

Let’s just say it plainly: being overwhelmed this time of year doesn’t make you weak—it makes you human. The world around us says you should feel magical and joyful, but your heart might feel tired, cracked, or heavy. And that’s okay.

Some of you are facing Christmas with an empty chair at the table.
Some are trying to navigate celebrations while carrying the weight of loss.
Some are quietly battling depression behind everyone else’s holiday excitement.
Some just feel alone—maybe more this season than any other.

Pain has a way of echoing louder during a season built on celebration. But you need to hear this: you’re not strange, and you’re not alone.

Even the First Christmas Had Tears

We often picture the first Christmas as serene: a silent night, peaceful animals, starlit skies. But the truth is, on the edges of that holy night, there were tears, fears, and exhaustion.

Mary and Joseph were far from home.
The city was overcrowded.
They delivered a baby in a place no one would choose.
It was messy. It was loud. It was lonely.

In other words—Christmas didn’t begin in perfection. It began in need, in uncertainty, in the dark.
And into that darkness came Jesus.

Your darkness doesn’t disqualify you from Christmas; it may actually help you understand it more deeply than most.

God Sees You in This Season

One of the most comforting truths in Scripture is this:

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.” (Psalm 34:18)

Christmas is not about us climbing up to God; it’s about God coming down to us.
Not to the strong, but to the struggling.
Not to the whole, but to the broken.
Not to the merry, but to the messy.

If your heart feels cracked this Christmas, God is not avoiding you—He is drawing near.

Permission to Feel What You Feel

You don’t have to fake joy.
You don’t have to “snap out of it.”
You don’t have to match the mood around you.

Your grief is real.
Your loneliness is real.
Your weariness is real.

And Jesus meets you as you are—not as the season suggests you should be.

But Here’s the Good News: Hurt Is Not the End of Your Story

There is hope. There is healing. There is comfort. And even if you can’t feel it today, it doesn’t mean God has stopped working.

Sometimes the most courageous prayer is simply:
“Lord, hold me together today.”

Sometimes the most faithful act is showing up to a new morning.
Sometimes hope grows quietly, like the slow, gentle rise of dawn.

Christmas reminds us that light comes—not all at once, but steadily, faithfully—into the darkest places.

A Few Gentle Encouragements for This Christmas

1. Let someone in.
You don’t have to share everything, but you also don’t have to carry everything alone.

2. Give yourself grace.
If all you manage is a small step today, that step matters.

3. Look for the tiny glimmers.
A song. A memory. A cup of coffee (my favorite). A kind word.
They don’t fix everything, but they remind us that God is still at work.

4. Remember: joy is not the same as happiness.
Joy is the quiet assurance that God is with you—even when your heart aches.

You Are Not Forgotten This Christmas

If this season is hard for you, please know this:
I see you. God sees you. You matter.

You are loved—extravagantly, endlessly, right now in the middle of your pain.

Christmas is not just for the cheerful; it’s for the weary, the grieving, the lonely, the ones trying their best to hold it all together.

It’s for you.

May the God who came near in Bethlehem come near to your heart today.
May He fill your darkness with His gentle light.
And may you sense—even in the smallest ways—that you are not alone.

Merry Christmas, dear friend.
Even if it’s a quiet one.
Even if it’s a hard one.
Even if it looks different this year.

The light is still coming. And so is hope.
-Grace & Peace
Pastor Scott.

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Advent Reflections Week 2 – When ‘Peace” Isn’t Really Peace.

“And He will be called… Prince of Peace.”
We read those words from Isaiah 9 every Advent, and they land soft and comforting—like warm light on a winter night. But Isaiah didn’t write them in a peaceful moment. He wrote them into chaos, fear, war, and political collapse. And into that storm he declares: A child is coming… and His rule will bring real pea

But here’s the thing about peace: not everyone in Scripture understood what it truly meant.

So for a moment, let’s imagine a conversation—a contrast—between the Prince of Peace Isaiah saw coming… and someone who thought he already understood peace, but didn’t.

Herod: “Peace Is What I Control.”

Herod the Great had a definition of peace that looked impressive on paper: massive building projects, economic growth, order enforced by power. A kind of forced calm.
He believed peace was the absence of threats.

So when whispers came of a child born King of the Jews, his version of “peace” suddenly cracked. A baby? A star in the sky? A question from wandering scholars?
Herod’s peace was so fragile it couldn’t survive a rumor.

He clutched control.
He tightened his grip.
He did the unthinkable—because fear always twists false peace into violence.

Herod teaches us this:
Any peace built on control will eventually crumble under the weight of fear.

Jesus, the Prince of Peace: “Peace Is What I Give.”

Now picture the contrast.

No palace.
No armies.
No fear-driven decisions.
Just a manger, a mother, and angels announcing “peace on earth.”

Jesus does not maintain peace by eliminating threats—He transforms peace by entering the world’s brokenness and absorbing its chaos.

His peace is not fragile; it’s fierce.
Not passive; but restorative.
Not enforced; but embodied.

He doesn’t clutch power—He lays it down.
He doesn’t silence threats—He redeems enemies.
He doesn’t demand calm—He brings healing.

If Herod preserved peace by tightening his fist, Jesus brought peace by opening His hands.

Isaiah said, “Of the greatness of His government and of His peace there will be no end.”
Real peace is not something you hold together; it’s something God holds together.

And Here We Are, Second Week of Advent

Between Herod’s panic and Christ’s presence is a question we must face during this season:

Which version of peace do we trust?
The one built on control…
or the one born in a manger?
Which do we honestly identify with more?

You see, Advent invites us to choose again. It invites us to dig a bit deeper, and reflect on our own personality archetype and patterns we fall into when the tides begin to rise and the pressures on.

Questions for Your Heart This Week

  1. Where am I clinging to control and calling it “peace,” rather than trusting the Prince of Peace to hold what I cannot?
  2. Am I holding on with a ‘Herod’ like grip? How can I loosen this false understanding of peace?
  3. What would it look like for Christ’s peace—not my preferences, not my need for certainty—to guide my reactions, relationships, and leadership this week?

May His peace—full, fierce, and everlasting—meet you on the road to Christmas.
-Pastor Scott.

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Christmas Reflections – Week 1

In the hush of the Advent season, we prepare our hearts for the coming of the King. Yet long before the angels filled Bethlehem’s skies with glory, heaven had already broken into human lives with terrifying, life-altering announcements. Two of those encounters—one with Jacob, one with Mary—stand centuries apart, yet they reveal the same two postures we still bring to God today. Jacob met God on the banks of the Jabbok River (Genesis 32:22-32). A man (the Scriptures say “a man,” but Hosea later calls Him angel and God Himself) appeared in the night and wrestled Jacob until dawn. Jacob fought with every ounce of his cunning, strength, and self-reliance—the same traits that had stolen birthright and blessing, the same instincts that had kept him running for twenty years. Only when his hip was touched and he was left limping did Jacob finally cling instead of wrestle. “I will not let You go unless You bless me,” he gasped. Even in surrender he was bargaining, yet God honored the cry and renamed him Israel—“he struggles with God.” The limp would stay with him forever, a permanent reminder that the blessing comes only after we exhaust our own power.

Centuries later, another angel stepped out of eternity into a humble Galilean home. This time the greeting was not a challenge but a shattering promise: “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” Mary’s first reaction was trouble and fear—just like Jacob’s—but the similarity ends there. Where Jacob clenched his fists, Mary opened her hands. “How can this be?” she asked, not in defiance but in honest wonder. She did not demand signs, wrestle for control, or calculate how to make the impossible happen in her own strength. She simply placed the entire weight of the future on the word of God: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). One encounter left a man limping into the rest of his life, forever marked by the struggle. The other left a young woman magnifying the Lord, carrying within her the Hope of the nations.

We still meet the living God in these same two ways. Some of us wrestle. We hear the call of God—to repentance, to forgiveness, to mission, to surrender—and our instinct is to grapple. We want explanations, guarantees, and control.
We bargain: “Lord, I’ll follow if You first fix this situation, heal this wound, secure this future.” We exhaust ourselves trying to bless ourselves, only to discover that every blessing from heaven comes with a limp we didn’t choose. Others hear the same voice and respond like Mary. They do not silence their questions—Mary asked “How?”—but they lay every question at the feet of the One who is faithful. They say, in essence, “I do not understand, I cannot make this happen, and I am afraid—but I belong to You. Let it be.” Faith, for them, is not the absence of fear or doubt; it is the presence of surrender. This Christmas, the Child who displaced Jacob’s strength with a touch and filled Mary’s emptiness with divine life still comes to us. The angels’ song still sounds: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace…” Peace—not to those who wrestle the Angel to the ground in their own power, but to those with whom He is pleased, those who receive rather than resist, who open rather than clench.

So the question is not whether God will break in—He already has, in a manger, on a cross, by His Spirit. The question is how we will meet Him. Will we spend another year wrestling in our own strength, walking away blessed but broken and limping? Or will we, like Mary, dare to say today, “Let it be to me according to Your word”?

Which posture will mark your Christmas—and the year to come?
Grace & Peace,
-Pastor Scott.

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