Christmas season is here. It’s a season that I adore. I sit at my desk now listening to a background melody streaming from my phone that’s sitting next to me. It’s Carrie Underwood singing Silent Night. I’ve just wiped away tears, not from the song at all, although it is beautiful. I took a break and watched a video on my social media feed. A beautiful young Israeli woman speaks to a family in a round-table type setting. She is telling a grieving family about the experience of their young son and brother, who was shot by Hamas terrorists. He didn’t die immediately and was taken to a hospital, where she was as well. During this filmed moment, she was able to share his last moments and words with this family – words he wished them to know.
The videos of former hostages have been sweeping my feed for a couple of days now. The trigger was the recent release of video footage of a group of six Israeli hostages who were held nearly a year in Hamas captivity. The video was filmed by Hamas of the six celebrating Hanukkah in 2023. Each of them was visibly frail and thin, with bandages covering apparent wounds. Hersh, Ori and Eden. Almog, Alexander and Carmel. These were their names. Four men and two women. The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) recovered the video showing their plight where they were housed in a tunnel buried beneath Gaza. It’s reported that they were all murdered in August 2024.
There are still three hostages remaining, since the October 7, 2023 raid on a kibbutz community and a music festival in southern Israel, when early that morning terrorists kidnapped and killed so many people, taking the hostages back to Gaza.
I remember where I was when national news channels reported on the developing story. Bo and I were in Blueridge, Georgia with my brother and sister-in-law for an anniversary trip. We sat with first morning coffee watching Fox News and hearing about what had taken place on the other side of the globe the early hours before we awoke.
There is always so much devastation taking place in our world. This instance of a terrorist organization affecting civilian life is just one such case. Every moment of every single day, it can be found. We ingest it on social media and all forms of media – on our phones, our tv’s, on our desktop computer’s news page. I’m convinced that the human brain is not really equipped to handle and process that much despair, grief and horror on a continual loop. It has desensitized our capacity to feel and hold empathy. It limits our ability to enter into grief; else the empathetic heart would be grieving at every waking minute with so much knowledge and awareness. Life does not allow for that. Our brains must still be affected though by the continual stimuli. This morning, that filing-away suppression that subconsciously occurs, which takes in the stimulus – the story, the agony of other humans – didn’t happen immediately. My brain didn’t abruptly usher it away, so I could move onto the next ensuing task. Instead, I stopped and felt. And I’m not mad about it.
Their stories were especially gripping and stopped me. The tears were unavoidable. I felt sorrow. I held their stories, their terror for a bit, imagining their pain. And it brought empathy for them and my own sorrow for the brokenness and evil of this world.
Sometimes, without even wanting to know, I read a story. It’s there and the headline pulls me into its vortex, and suddenly I know some horrific truth that another human has endured. In the casual scroll that allowed me to know it, I quickly scroll away. I wasn’t prepared to take that in or to feel that in this ordinary moment. I feel for guilt for that often because moving over tragedy doesn’t align with a heart of compassion for others.
Like in any other season, Christmas brings its own kind of joy. The music, the nostalgia of snowed-covered scenes on Christmas cards, baking pies and burning scented candles, giving gifts – all of it ushers back childhood and blessing in my life. It makes me remember. It brings me hope when I ride by the life-sized manger scene on the front lawn of the Methodist church. Each evening, as I drive through our quaint downtown after leaving the office, the glow of colored lights literally warms my soul. Seeing an image of Jesus in his most vulnerable state, a baby clothed in humanity, I feel the joy of knowing him – of knowing God.
As with every moment of our lives, things aren’t either-or. We can’t be solely grief-stricken. We can never be solely happy. Life exists in the in-between. In the both-and.
I can both have the joy of the Lord deep in my soul, baked into my DNA, who I am, while also experiencing negative emotion. I can both have fun and laughter in the Christmas season, while also experiencing unfinished business with a friend. No matter the contrasting situations that are pulling my mind in opposite directions, this I do always have – his peace is the foundation of my response to the world around me. Even in fear, anger, doubt, uncertainty, depressed mood and yes, even in grief for others, I still know his peace. I still have hope in the midst of all of it.
This morning was one of those moments. The complexity of our humanity is beyond knowing. The complexity of our humanity can only make sense when we look to our Creator. How is it possible to experience all the emotions that we do and still function and move in the world? When we can’t make sense of the both-and of our lives, we can look to Jesus and his Bible.
What do I mean by this?
The brokenness, the darkness is here. And here it will remain. Sometimes, the sad story strains my understanding. How can such darkness be inflicted? Why does it have to happen? And what am I supposed to do with this story, as I just go about my easy life today? How do happiness and sorrow co-exist?
When I look to the Bible, I know the answer. Not fully. We can never know fully know the mind of God and why one person experiences terror or trauma and others do not – or why we experience it in varying degrees. What I do know is what grounds me. It is that the brokenness and darkness will not endure forever. Even though it is here now, it will not remain. Just as Jesus endured pain and suffering beyond comprehension while he was in human form, so too he knew perfect love. He is the Prince of Peace. He is Immanuel – God with Us.
This life of maybe eighty or so years is only a vapor, like a single breath, in light of eternity. I can imagine a never-ending timeline in my mind. I can see a line, going away from me like a ribbon that flows out into time and space with no end in sight, and understand that is my life. That is your life. At its beginning, held at my birth, the mark of time on earth is so miniscule. So much so, that you can’t even see it stamped onto that timeline. It’s a speck of time.
Life feels long. It is painful. It is difficult to grasp the pain sometimes, many times. Yet, it does end.
Because of that, I cling to my God. I cling to the mercy of God that this life is only a vapor. Forever – in his presence; forever – existing as his child; forever – apart from sin and brokenness is on the horizon. Because of that, I hope for heaven. Because of that, there are simultaneous joy and sorrow. The peace always remains in the midst of the both-and, when you become a new creation in Christ. When you trade your broken, doomed-for-spiritual-death life, for a new life in Him (in knowing him), you get the peace too.
If you do not know this hope, please read the gospel of John in the bible. Then work your way through the rest of its text. All of it points to his redemption from the sin and darkness that we experience now. Please reach out to a person who can tell you the good news of his peace and how to know Him.
More on the “Beautiful Six” hostages in the link above.
Mining Beneath the Ordinary 