How Can We Find Christmas Joy In The Face Of Tragedy?

        It’s amazing the things you think of.  I woke up Saturday morning thinking about Barbie dolls hidden away in closets and bicycles waiting to be put together, and I cried.  I cried for those moms and dads who were planning funerals when they should have been wrapping presents.  I cried for Christmas dresses that would now be the dress their child would wear for their burial. 

I cried for children who would never know what it feels like to be safe again, who’re too young to grasp that their friends aren’t coming back again.  And I cried for teachers who had shielded young bodies with their own while keeping children safe and quiet and choking down their own fear.   

And I knew that God was crying too.  That God was choking down His own fury at the darkness of evil in a world He had created as good.  

So what do we do now?  How do we answer grief and pain and sorrow that is almost impossible for us to comprehend? And is it some cruel cosmic joke that this, the third Sunday of Advent, is supposed to remind us of joy?  “Joy to the World.”  Ironic isn’t it? 

Or is it?  Perhaps it is exactly what we need to remember on this particular morning.  You see, it is the gift of joy -- not the gift of happiness that the Christ child brings.  

Happiness shows up in all the usual places you’d expect to find it: a good marriage, a child’s sudden hug, an unexpected check in the mail.  Joy is not so predictable.  

Instead it is a paradox.  It’s laughter in the midst of tears; it’s healing in spite of the pain; it’s support and strength at the darkest points of our lives.  It runs like a river underground even in the midst of life’s deepest sorrow, and it is possible only because we know the security of God’s presence with us: a shepherd who guides us through the darkest valleys to finally rest in green pastures.

For somehow, even in the midst of a tragedy so bleak that it wipes out all of the laughter that should come with Christmas morn, we know that the darkness of evil cannot and will not overcome the light of the love which is Christ.  

That’s the message of the gospel of John, who does not talk of starry nights and a manger bed, but instead begins the story of Christ with the words “The light has come into the darkness and the darkness can not overcome it.”  

That is the news the angels sang to shepherds so long ago.  “Do not be afraid, for I bring you news of great joy.”  In that silent night, on that lonely hill, came the healing light of God’s love and in that light we shall always find our deepest joy. 

Our job now is to carry that light into our world -- to be the light of hope and strength, to be the companion who holds that light for others when they cannot, to echo the words of Wordsworth’s song: “ The wrong shall fail, the right prevail with peace on earth, goodwill to men.”