by Dona Hake
Yesterday I was finishing up some last minute Christmas shopping. I walked to the counter and laid my things down and a clerk that I speak with often began to ring me up. I asked her how she has been doing. She dropped her head and said, “Not well at all. I am really having a hard time getting through this…” I immediately knew what she was referring to for I knew from previous conversations that she had lost someone very special in her life. She began to share that it has been five years and she has done well for the past five Christmas holidays yet this year she could not figure out why this one was so hard. The depression that enveloped her touched me in my heart. I began to try to console her for I too know what it is like to lose someone over the holidays. Sometimes words seem so inadequate yet I know they do more than what we realize at times. I walked out the door and prayed that God would comfort her heart and He has continued to remind me to pray for her.
I know that I have shared this often over the past weeks but it bothers me seeing how the hustle and bustle of the holidays can pull us into our own little “worlds” in which we are oblivious to the pain of those that are reaching into memories at this time and they are struggling. It may not even be a death but a broken relationship that has caused division in your family. Plain and simple…holidays can open up wounds that may not be totally healed.
I encourage you to be sensitive to those around you at this time. Maybe you are reading this and you are walking through the pain of remembering someone you love and have lost or you are enduring a trial that has taken the joy of the celebration away. I pray that God’s comfort would permeate you and keep your heart and that His joy would well up within you. I pray also that great strength would arise within you that you may in turn share that same comfort with someone else. God bless you.
2 Corinthians 1:3 (The Message)
“All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us.”
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