By Amy Butler
I don’t know if you feel it this time of year like I do. But in the midst of the twinkling lights, all my eyes seem to focus on are the burned-out bulbs.
And rushing crowds outside don’t seem cheer-filled or excited as much as they do tired and late and clutching too tightly to lists of things that must be done immediately, as if the whole merry season might come to a screeching halt if they aren’t.
And all the images of happy celebrations start to choke out moments of joy, when it becomes readily apparent that your celebrations, while happy in many ways, are still worn and heavy with the weight of too many tears.
It’s the expectations that are the worst. Expectations of others; expectations we hold in our own hearts; the strong suspicion that, lacking exactly the prescribed circumstances, this season of joy becomes not joyful at all. Instead, it becomes sorrow-filled and sad and so different from everything we had hoped.
If this season feels a little like that to you, you are not alone. In the face of the world’s shiny, glittery joy, the sadness we carry — however it arrived — stands in stark contrast.
And there are many of us who carry sadness this season.
In fact, such is the human condition, and not just for those of us waiting for Christmas in 2009. This was something the Hebrew people knew for sure when they listened to the dire warnings and threats of judgment that came from the prophet Zephaniah. To hear him talk, the people carried a great weight of sadness and regret, and they couldn’t do anything more than walk in utter fear and dread about what was about to happen to them.
The worst thing of all was that they felt cut off — all alone, separated from Yahweh, the God who had carried them like a child and nurtured them through years of uncertainty. They knew that God seemed absent; they knew life was especially hard; and they did not know in any way what the future held.
Pure, unadulterated fear was the subtext of their lives; they feared God’s absence; they feared their own loss; they feared a future they could not imagine.
And it did get bad for them. For 70 years they lived in exile in Babylon, longing for Jerusalem, desperate for home, missing what felt like God’s presence and approval. Can you imagine how sad their holidays were?
Somehow they managed, though. They looked around at each other, and in the fear and the seeming absence of God, they dared to utter hope and promise and faith to one another. Through their tears they comforted each other — not with empty platitudes or shallow assurances, but with shared experience and with the memory of a God who promised never to leave. It was hard to remember God’s love and presence in the middle of the pain, but there were moments — flashes of memory and hope — when the present circumstances didn’t seem to overrun the hope of a better future. And when those flashes of promise came, they reminded each other. And they kept reminding each other — for all the moments when they couldn’t believe, when the tears were coming too fast and the pain seemed to make it wholly impossible to breathe at all.
Yet curiously enough, a few verses from the very end of Zephaniah have a decidedly different tone than the first part of the book. Take a look.
Nobody knows for sure when this passage was added to the book of Zephaniah — it could very well have been added after the 70 years of exile were over and the people were looking back on their pain and grief. But it could also have been the work of a prophet reminding his community of the eternal promise of God. When they couldn’t see the hope; when they couldn’t see the other side of the pain; when they felt so far away from home they knew they would never find their way back … perhaps that was when the prophet gave them these words of hope, words they could hang onto for just a little longer, words to help them breathe through the pain and uncertainty, words to remind them that God was there all along.
And now, we hear these words of Zephaniah and repeat them to each other.
Do not fear … do not let your hands grow weak. Remember that the LORD, your God, is in your midst. God will bring you home. God will gather you in. God will restore your fortunes. Be reminded; remind each other. Thanks be to God. Amen.