As a Lutheran Christian, I understand that we are people of paradox, of seeming contradictions, of both/and. We can – and do – hold more than one true thing in our hearts simultaneously: grief and joy, despair and hope, wishing things were different yet being grateful for the blessings that are. Life can feel hard and hopeful at the same time.
That’s the case as we commend a loved one who has died to God’s care. And it’s the case during the Christmas season, a time of year so holy and so commercialized, with such high expectations for family togetherness, magical surprises, peace and celebration. Some years those things happen for us, some years they don’t.
Into the paradoxes of our lives and our humanity, God in Jesus Christ comes over and over each year. God, who was born to a human mother, sees and knows us in our difficulties, joys and contradictions. Immanuel, God with us, shines as the light of hope amid our lives’ unfolding. We realize that we are God’s beloved – not because things are going the way we want, but simply because we are created and loved by God.
This message is excerpted from “Christmas at the cemetery” by Jordan Miller-Stubbendick in the January/February 2022 Gather magazine. Today we commemorate Johann Konrad Wilhelm Loehe, renewer of the church, 1872.
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