As 2020 careens to a close and we limp into Christmas season, most of us aren’t feeling very jolly. It may be the most wonderful time of the year, but we’re just hoping to make it through December. Preferably with a vaccine.
Few us thought last year when we celebrated the season, that in a year this strange word called COVID would upend so much of our lives. And even as the virus began to spread, none of us thought pandemic Easter would turn into a Corona Christmas. And yet here we are.
It’s been a rough year. Natural disasters. A global pandemic. Racial tension. A divisive election. And probably a dozen other things that would grab headlines in a normal year. Most of us aren’t really feeling. Some of us are mourning deep losses. Every one of the 250,000 plus who have died from COVID has a name and a family and a face. There will be empty spaces at too many tables this year.
And the economic pain has been shattering. Lost businesses. Lost jobs. Lost retirement. Kids who assumed a year of school and friends and summer camps and graduation have been forced to spend so much time, in their formative years, staring at a piece of glass, forging community through their cameras.
This Christmas, more than any in recent memory, will mean loneliness, hardship, and pain. For many, Zoom will replace the warmth and hugs and handshakes of the holiday. And yet we Christians might lament, but not despair, for it is precisely in this season that we most need Advent. Christmas is just what God ordered for a broken world.
Here are three timely takeaways from the incarnation of the Son of God for 2020. Read more here: