Advent: for the one who doubts

Advent: for the one who doubts

Guest post by Julianne Van’t Land

To the one who is bracing herself for the Advent season, I see you.

Week after week, Sunday after Sunday, you rise early to a house full of children or roommates or a home empty with echoes. You will yourself out of bed and into the shower, wishing the hot water could rinse away the weary weight you carry. You dress and head to church, rehearsing in your head what you’ll say when people ask you how you’re doing and why you haven’t signed up for the fundraiser/bible study/sunday school class. You successfully arrive a few minutes late to slip in unnoticed among the people who have been your closest friends and family. They are experiencing God in a powerful way, earnest voices ring out with joy and passion, arms raising around you. You spend the time fidgeting and battling your cynicism (do they really feel something that powerful?) and trying to figure out just how much you need to participate to keep the questions at bay. Because, let’s face it, nobody wants to hear about your deconstructed faith during the passing of the peace.

Suffering and Christmas

Suffering and Christmas

Christmas is supposed to be white twinkle lights and homemade ornaments with perfect family members and wishes come true. But that's not how life works. Some people are going through really hard things, and the timing happens to coincide with the most festive time of the year.

Some will be braving memories of a lost loved one for the first time. For others, it's been years but the pain remains fresh. Sickness. Chronic illness. Pain. The list of hardships is long, and most of us know someone who’s suffering—or perhaps it’s even us.

A Perfect Peace

A Perfect Peace

Guest post by Caroline Mertens

This is our ragged, fleshly life:  tragedy and grief in the middle of our existence, bookended at both sides by delightful joy and felicity. We encounter the deepest delight, followed by profound heartbreak, and then later, if we have adequately leaned into the grief, we might discover God’s divinely appointed hope. Perhaps without the depth of pain surrounding the magnitude of a trial, we could never experience the most glorious elated joy. And we balance upon a great divide, never far from either spectrum of emotion, but within a brief moment we may become the proprietor of grief or joy.

Cafe’ Con Leche

Cafe’ Con Leche

Friends, I share with you the profound word of the Lord to my heart this Advent season:

Cafe’ con leche.

Yes, I am pretty easily impressed. But I know this is from His heart to mine because He alone understands my love of the Spanish language and of coffee. So He speaks to me in Spanish. About coffee. What could be more profound for me?

For Those Who Feel Forgotten

For Those Who Feel Forgotten

Guest post by Rebecca VanDeMark

Ever since I was a little girl, I have been intrigued by shepherds, specifically the shepherds the Bible mentioned in the Christmas story. Historically shepherds were referred to as the forgotten people and were seen as especially lowly in society. Thousands of years later, I am humbled to admit how many times I feel like I am part of the forgotten people. Despite social media, technology, and the ability to instantly connect with others, I think we all struggle with feeling forgotten in different ways. The holiday season can compound these feelings of loneliness in a hundred little ways. I know personally how hard and painful it can be to experience joy in this season when we feel like we have been forgotten.