when the most wonderful time of the year...isn't

Last Friday night I sat in a normal living room on a normal Friday night during Bible study. We went around the room for prayer requests. Pray for this family who just experienced the death of the mother after their daughter was burned over 40% of her body just a few weeks ago. Pray for our friends, cancer has returned. Pray for my co-worker, her son might have autism. Pray for a friend who continues to battle addictions. Peace for the family, it's their first Christmas with their son in jail. Pray for their marriage. For his job. For her illness. 


In a season of joy, Christmas, this season where we are supposed to be reminding ourselves that our Lord has come to save and rescue and heal us we focus on wrapping paper, pretty lights, music. I sat there and it hit me like a ton of bricks; during the happiest season of the year, a time that I have fully been partaking in,  people are hurting and suffering and feeling so alone. 

We prayed. I wept. 

I drove and saw Christmas lights with my boyfriend last night. I could have been sitting next to his hospital bed. I wrote Christmas cards and passed them out at to co-workers. I could have been writing a bereavement card for a family member. I baked cookies and took them to work. I could have been wondering if I will be able to get a job to support myself.

This is where I struggle. In a time where we, I,  should be celebrating Christ and His love for us I do the exact opposite of what Christ would do in my place. I overlook those who are hurting and grieving and are lost. I sit in my happy little world and never stop to think about those whose pain is being magnified because of the season that it is. As I sat in my Bible study listening to the burdens of so many people being spilled before the Throne of Grace I prayed that God would heal my heart, not from a broken marriage or the loss of a loved one or a serious illness, but from indifference. 

My prayer this Christmas is that I will have His heart. That I will see people as He sees them and that I will be able to offer just a little bit of His joy and peace to others, not just during Christmas, but all year 'round. 

One Solitary Life

"Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty and then for three years was an itinerant preacher. He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put his foot inside a big city. He never traveled more than two hundred miles from the place where He was born. He never did one of those things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself….


While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed on a cross between two thieves. While he was dying his executors gambled for the only piece of property he had on earth - His coat. When he was dead, He was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.


Nineteen long centuries have come and gone and today He is the centerpiece of the human race and the leader of the column of progress. I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever were built, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life."
- Excerted from the book "One Solitary Life"