This is the whisper that came to me this morning- the one that interrupted my weeping moment-the one that supernaturally invited me to hope.  His voice can do that.  Slice through layer upon layer of hurt, humanness and opaque pain to ignite flames of hope and love in the darkest of places.

Christmas is approaching and it’s cold.  All is glitter. The air is ripe with cinnamon, windows are awake with candlelight and store fronts are drenched in magic, but it’s cold.

One friend just suffered her third miscarriage.  My knees hit the ground.

Another friend is approaching one whole year without her son.  I am aching, continually grieving with her.

My 86-year-old grandmother is frail, sad and lost. Nearly a year has passed since her husband of 66 years became dust and memories.  I hug her never wanting to let go and yet also wanting to fold the thinness of her into a paper airplane, sending her as she wishes into the heavens, into a better day.

I am in urgent need of a hearth where hearts can go to get warm… 

A better day is coming.

Is this the fire I long for?  Are these words flickering, glowing and beckoning me to come?  Does this sentence have the power to make souls toasty in spite of all matter of frozenness and death around them?  If I stare into it deeply, will my eyes reflect the fire dance and be opened to wonder, mystery?  Will the light remind my soul that light is what I was created for and light is where I am headed?  Will pain begin to feel more like a part of a story and less like the ending?

If you are reading these words, perhaps your heart is cold.  Perhaps you want to know hope.  Not simply to know the word, but to go there, to really go there. To sit at the hearth, staring into flames of an unseen reality, flames of promise, getting lost in the light of truth and feeling warm…even if for a bit.

A better day is coming.

Immanuel brought this reality to earth with him- a tiny baby growing in a virgin, born in a stable, bringing with Him from heaven the answer to our pain.  Not an answer from pain, but a way through and out of pain, a way into a better day, a forever answer that cuts through flesh and bone, harmonizing with the soul fabric of all who beat and breathe.

It was a rescue mission.  The strangest and most miraculous the world has ever known.  That snake, he bit Eve with his lies about God and the venom has seeped into every soul since, sin which blinds the eyes and severs the heart.  A chasm between man and God was formed, distrust from child to her all-loving Father.   A remedy was needed, an anecdote.  God came down, spurred by crazy grief and crazy love for His children, dying of sin.  God curled himself into a womb. He became baby. Boy. Man. Sacrifice. Savior. Remedy.

I spent years wrestling God for answers, the ones I thought having would bring peace and closure from the loss of my baby girl.  The poisonous questions first uttered to Eve in Genesis have found their way through history and into the chapter of me. The snake offered new bait with the same old deception, and frail and grieving, I feasted.

“Did God really say He loved you?  Did He really say He would take care of you?  Is He really all he’s cracked up to be?”  This mad questioning of God and needing to know why, Why, WHY… got me nowhere but more deeply embedded in the enemy’s plan to rob from me. Now it seems the better path is to get lost in the answers He has given.  Answers like…

“I do not willingly or from my heart grieve or afflict my children” (Lamentations 3:33).

Answers like…

“I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me.  Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart because I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Answers like…

“The God of Hope will fill you with all joy and peace as you trust and believe in Him” (Romans 15:13).

And finally answers like…

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.  All these things are gone forever” (Revelation 21:4).

I need Him- I need God’s saving.  I yearn for what the baby came to bring.  I crave what the man died to give.  I need the promised power that surged in Jesus as He broke through grave clothes and out into the light of day.  I need it because I am afraid, because I ache for my girl and I am in empathic agony for those around me.   Because it’s been nearly eight years and my Christmas tree drenched in pink ornaments fully reminds me of the daughter that does not open gifts or sing carols or bake cookies with me. I do not see her eyes dazzle with wonder and delight at the twinkling of the tree lights…and yet, I know they dazzle.  They are glory dancing- reflecting all that her little eyes behold in the kingdom of a Better Day.

A better day iscoming.  The baby is coming…coming to die, coming to take away the sting of death and to beckon the weary of heart to be warm in the fire, the fire that whispers of the possibility of joy now and joy forevermore.  A fire that rages and surges with power to live full of hope and strength in spite of painful realities.  A fire that conjures up the deep truths that first brought you to grace and will bring you there still, the fire that dwells inside, the one that has a name, the one that calls you child.

My eyes have something to say…see the fire dancing?

Hope is here and in this moment, I am warm.