The Longest Night

This week was a hard week; it felt like a really long week. Today was a long, heavy heart day. As Christmas draws near, there's a sadness in my heart that is hard to overcome with Bing Crosby singing White Christmas, decorating cookies, or watching Frosty the Snowman with the girls. Then I think to myself how much worse it will feel when Dad is not here.  I know I’m not alone in feeling this way this season. So many others dealing with loss.

Right now, I so badly miss hearing my Dad's voice. How heartbroken I am now when he looks at me as though he wants to speak and nothing comes. I wish he were here speaking to me telling me it will be okay, because he would be the one to tell me it will be okay and I would believe him wholeheartedly.

I remember playing piano for one or two of his Longest Night services. While my heart aches to hear his voice, I'm grateful to have his written words. In my mind, I can hear him speaking these words and that is what I have now. I searched for one of his Longest Night sermons tonight. There’s one that I almost have memorized, but for some reason I was searching for something else tonight. This is the first one I found among the files and it what I needed to find tonight.

He talked about a time earlier in the year when a summer storm wiped out many trees on the property behind my childhood home; he referenced a couple other stories. But he also talked about caring for and dealing with losing his parents to dementia.

I never really asked my Dad and he never really spoke of what it was like losing his parents in the same way I’m losing him but in the middle of the sermon he writes, “Frustrating. Emotionally draining; we poured ourselves out until we were empty and it hurt like hell.”

I understand that, Dad. I really do.

And then, he wrote as he always did and I will tell you that how he wrote was exactly how he spoke to me when I was needing a nudge and some reassurance that God is with us. Although it's just bits and pieces of the rest of his sermon, maybe the following can be a nudge and some reassurance, or just a little bit of comfort for you tonight.

“To know what it means for your heart to be an empty landscape is to know what it means to journey through the valley of suffering to the vale of soul-making. You cannot hear Isaiah 43 without knowing exactly what he is talking about… You cannot be the same person you were before. We would never wish the experience on anyone, nor would we want to have to do it again. But we wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

This night, this longest night and shortest day of the year, reminds us that even suffering, pain, death, and loss can be redeemed by God’s grace and mercy. In the Gospel, Jesus himself is on the receiving end of Martha’s grief and anger: ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ Whoa, talk about a guilt trip! 

And Jesus promptly raises Lazarus from the dead. But more important, more astonishing is that Jesus reveals himself to be the resurrection and the life. Through faith, this life and this resurrection are yours. 

The empty woods of the landscape and of my heart after caring for my parents proved in both cases to be landscapes of miracles of life and resurrection. The valley of suffering to truly be a vale of soul-making. A time and place that holds the possibility of renewal and hope. 

As the celebration of the incarnation, the coming of Immanuel, God with us, nears remember the words [in] the hymn “the hopes and fears of all the years, are met in [Thee] tonight.” And He is meeting you exactly wherever you may be tonight – in your grief, your suffering, your loss and pain, the broken dreams – God is near. Hope cannot be far away.”

Amen