Discover the Beauty of the Season, Even When It’s Hard #AdventReflections

The holidays can hold great joy but also deep sorrow. What or who is missing from our lives becomes hyper clear at this time of year. Our grief may make it difficult to discover the beauty of the season.

Focusing on the not here makes it difficult to be joyful at a time when we should be exceedingly so. After all, the God of the universe came down to earth, for us! 

The birth of the Christ child flipped the world upside down. The Sinless living in the midst of the sinful. The Divine taking on human form.

We should be glorying in the immensity and beauty of it all!

Discover the Beauty Everywhere

Still, grief and anxiety are effective saboteurs of peace and joy. But cultivate a heart of gratitude and you’ll discover the beauty even in the middle of the greatest sorrow and most difficult circumstance,

because you’ll see Jesus there.

Cultivate a heart of gratitude and discover the beauty even in the middle of great sorrow, because you’ll see Jesus there. Click To Tweet

And wherever we find Jesus, we find goodness and love, peace and joy. This season of Advent reminds us, we can find Jesus Christ everywhere, in every moment, forever.

Wherever we find Jesus, we find goodness, love, peace, joy; and He can be found everywhere, in every moment. Click To Tweet

He has come, He’ll always be.

In mounds of dirty dishes and days of sick kids, in financially lean months and challenging-health ones, in relational conflicts and times of isolation, Jesus is there. He offers us Himself. He promises us Someone to walk with forever.

And He delivers. 

Jesus promises us Someone to walk with forever. And He delivers. #AdventReflections Click To Tweet

Share the Greatest Gift; Find Everlasting Joy

Jesus is our greatest gift. Gifting others reminds us … focuses us … on the what/Who we do have, not the missing.

So a way to glory in the glory of the season is by becoming the conduit of the love of the One who heals and redeems. To offer a hand to help, a shoulder to cry on, a word to uplift, a prayer to intercede.

A way to glory in the glory of the Christmas season is by becoming the conduit of the love of the One who saves. Click To Tweet

By gifting others we’re sharing the blessings of the One who came down for us … we’re sharing Christ Himself. 

The empty chair at the table, the absence of a secure job, the wayward child … they’re real and they hurt. But when we see all we still have in the Savior Come Down—all we have through the blessings of the Holy promise—joy reclaims the season. 

In the tremendous beauty of the Gift given, the Miracle delivered in the infant Jesus, we find true peace and everlasting joy … even when life hurts. 

In the tremendous beauty of the Miracle delivered in the infant Jesus, we find peace/joy...even when life hurts. Click To Tweet

“Be satisfied with what you have, for He Himself has said, I will never leave you or forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5b, HCSB

Reflections: What sorrow is smothering you this year? Have you tried shifing your focus from what’s missing in your life to the glory you have … and will always have …  in the miraculous gift of Jesus Christ? 

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It’s been more than 5 years of counting and I’ve well passed 5,000 gifts in Ann Voskamp’s Joy Dare! What a blessing! Here are numbers #5587–5607. Read my entire list by clicking here.

• *Time to serve my son breakfast before he left for a few days; *Ability to write real pen/paper letters to several people this morning; *Vehicles all fixed
• *Talking with a long-distance writer friend who is also a special need mother (we relate on many levels); *Working with Rach’s team to plan her next education year; *Spending time I didn’t feel I had to help my youngest gain perspective during an overwhelming week for him (well worth less sleep)
• Squeezing in a tiny bit of deep cleaning; *Christmas caroling in the nursing home; *Being shown what unconditional love looks like through the interactions of my daughter with the residents
• *Spending the day hanging out with my guy; *Celebrating the retirement of a special lady with wonderful friends; *The joy with which Rachel always greets me when I come home after she’s tucked into bed and check on her
• *David Phelps Christmas music + candy/cookie making = purejoy!; *Technology to stay home and attend a meeting via webinar; *Joey jumping right in to help me up my kitchen mess so I’m not up half the night doing it
• *Working with the youth at our church’s annual cookie/candy sale; *Incredible beauty of hiking in a snowstorm; *Finishing the second great read-aloud Tales of Larkin novel with the kids
• *Able to join our church family for worship despite the snowstorm; *First cross country skiing of the season; *Danny home safely from Michigan/Indiana visit

*affiliate links present in this post

*Two copies of this book were received from BlogAbout Network and Zondervan in exchange for an honest review of the book, The Broken Way. The thoughts are my own. 

By His grace ≈

Julie