Scripture Reading: Acts 1:7-11, 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, Revelation 22:12-13, Revelation 22:17-21
We spend the month of December preparing for one day that comes and goes like a vapor. As a young girl, the anticipation of Christmas was my favorite part of the year. Now, as a nearly forty-year-old mom of three, the expected holly jolly and merriment of the season can feel forced. I long for heaven and a day when there will be no more tears, grief, or pain. After all of the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, the new year can feel like a breath of fresh air.
Christ’s first coming brought hope and joy into a world that waited for and anticipated the arrival of the Messiah. First Thessalonians 4:16–17 tells us Jesus will come again: “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the archangel’s voice, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are still alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.”
As adults, the weight of this season feels heavy—we notice who’s missing at the table and the unfulfilled longings we’ve carried from year to year. When faced with this grief, we have a choice. We can sit in bitterness because of our grief. Or we can ask for our Savior to remind us that the hope we have in Him remains real in our hearts in the middle of grief. The new year invites us to consider Christ in a new light. For when Christmas passes, we can shift our thinking from finding the perfect gift or surviving the busyness to how He wants to continue shaping us in the year ahead.
When we consider Christmas in light of the second advent, it changes everything. For when we consider Christmas for the miracle of hope it brings to our hearts and homes, we look to Jesus to fulfill and renew us. And unlike the perfectly chosen gift under the tree, He can fulfill and renew us.
Today, on the first day of the year, we may carry with us the grief of unrealized hopes from last year. Perhaps the Christmas season was exhausting. It doesn’t have to stay that way, friend. We can walk into this new year with hope because Jesus is coming soon. The good news is that not only did Christ come to save us from our sins but that He is coming again to make all things new on the day when He makes His home with us forever. Until that day, may “the grace of the Lord Jesus be with everyone. Amen.” (Revelation 22:21).
Written by Jessica Mathisen
