Christmas Doesn’t Ask You to Pretend Everything Is Fine

By Pastor John Erickson

Christmas can come with an unspoken instruction: be happy.

Turn up the music. Put on the lights. Eat another cookie. Take the picture before anyone starts arguing.

I enjoy the good parts of the season. But if your life is hurting, being surrounded by cheerful expectations can make the hurt feel even lonelier.

What if you are grieving? What if your family is strained? What if the year has left you tired, disappointed, or uncertain?

The Christmas story does not require you to pretend those things are gone.

It announces that God has come into a world where they are painfully real.

We are good at looking for one less problem

We often think of peace as the absence of whatever is bothering us.

There is a rock in my shoe. I take it out, and I feel better. There is a difficult situation at work. I imagine changing departments and finally being able to breathe.

Sometimes removing a problem is exactly the right thing to do. A harmful situation may require action, protection, or a change.

But if peace can only exist when nothing troubles us, we will spend a long time waiting.

There is usually another rock.

We can move from one hoped-for solution to the next, convinced that the new job, the new purchase, or the next achievement will finally settle everything inside.

A good change may improve our circumstances without answering our deeper need.

Biblical peace reaches toward wholeness

The Hebrew word shalom carries a richer picture than merely the end of a disagreement. It can speak of well-being, completeness, and things being as they should be.

Peace certainly includes freedom from conflict. But God's restoring work reaches into what has been damaged, disordered, and torn apart.

That is why Isaiah's promise of a Prince of Peace matters.

The child is not simply a comforting distraction from the world's trouble. The promised King brings a reign of justice and righteousness, a peace whose increase has no end.

Christians recognize the fulfillment of that hope in Jesus.

Christmas is not God asking a broken world to arrange its face more pleasantly. It is God moving toward the brokenness in love.

The vase in my office

I keep a vase in my office that I broke and glued back together.

It looks like a vase again. But you can see that it is not exactly as it was before. The repair has not made its history invisible.

That vase is tied to the first vision I received from God. I saw a beautiful vase fall and shatter. Then I saw God picking up the pieces and putting them back together. But it looked a little crooked. In the vision, I knew I was the vase, and my response was basically, You did not quite fix me yet. What the heck?

I keep the repaired vase as a reminder of what restoration can look like in a life that is still unfinished.

Pieces that were scattered have been brought together. The brokenness is not the whole story anymore. Yet the evidence of the break remains.

The illustration is imperfect. God is not limited to the quality of my glue work. And a human wound is much more than a damaged object.

Still, the vase helps me picture the tension we live in: real restoration, with more still to come.

We can receive God's peace without being able to point to a life from which every mark of pain has disappeared.

Advent lets us wait honestly

Advent looks backward to the longing for Christ's coming and forward to his return.

That gives the season a kind of honesty we sometimes miss.

Jesus has come. God's kingdom has broken into history. We have received forgiveness, the Spirit, and the promise of new creation.

We are also waiting.

People still grieve. Injustice persists. Bodies become ill. Relationships fracture. The world is not yet fully as it should be.

Christian hope does not deny either side of that reality.

We can celebrate the birth of Christ while admitting that we need him to finish what he has begun.

That is not a failure to appreciate Christmas. It is part of understanding what Christmas announces.

Invite him into what hurts

My instinct is often to ask God to remove the uncomfortable feeling as quickly as possible.

There is nothing wrong with asking for relief. Scripture gives us permission to cry for help.

But I am learning to add another prayer: be here with me. Help me bring this honestly into your presence. Show me how to receive your care in the middle of it.

That may happen through quiet prayer. It may happen through a friend, a counselor, medical treatment, practical help, or a conversation I have avoided.

Peace is not a command to remain passive in the face of harm. God can meet us as we take the steps needed for safety and healing.

Nor do we have to call every painful thing good in order to trust that he can redeem it.

You can bring the pieces

If you have joy this Christmas, receive it with gratitude.

If you are carrying sorrow, you do not need to hide it to make the celebration more comfortable for everybody else.

The Prince of Peace is not frightened by what is chaotic in you. He does not need the pieces arranged before he can come near.

Bring him the truth about this season. Let somebody trustworthy know what you are carrying. Receive the small forms of care available today while you keep hoping for the wholeness he has promised.

The lights and music can be beautiful.

But the deeper gift is the One who enters the dark with us.

Christmas does not ask you to pretend everything is fine. It gives you someone to trust while everything is not.