If You’re Not Okay This Christmas
Christmas is supposed to be merry and bright. At least that's what the songs tell us.
But for some of you reading this, this Christmas feels anything but merry. Maybe it's your first Christmas without someone you love. Maybe there's an empty chair at the table that wasn't empty last year. Maybe it’s your first holiday season after a divorce and your watching your kids pack bags to spend half of Christmas somewhere else. Maybe you're facing a health crisis that makes it hard to muster the energy to pretend everything is okay. Maybe the financial stress of the season only highlights what you don't have.
The cultural pressure to be joyful can make the grief feel even heavier.
If that's you today, I want you to know something… your pain is valid. Your struggle is real. And the Christmas story has something to say to you and what you’re experiencing.
// The Long Wait
The Christmas story didn't just begin in a stable in Bethlehem. It began centuries earlier with a promise.
God told his people that a Messiah was coming, a deliverer, a king, a savior who would make all things right. The prophets spoke about him. Isaiah painted pictures of him. And the faithful waited for him.
They waited, and waited, and waited.
Generations lived and died without seeing the promise fulfilled. They endured occupation by foreign empires. They experienced exile, oppression, and what seemed to be silence from heaven. They had the promise, but they didn't have the fulfillment. They knew God had spoken, but it felt like He had ghosted them. The waiting wasn't easy. It wasn't pretty. And for many, it was lonely.
But here's what we find in the Christmas story… the waiting wasn't wasted.
When Jesus finally arrived, He didn't come to a people who had it all together. He came to a nation under Roman rule. He was born to a betrothed teenage girl in a cultural context where that carried incredible shame. His family became refugees, fleeing political violence. His first visitors weren't dignitaries or the religiously elite, they were shepherds, the blue-collar outcasts of society.
God didn't wait for perfect circumstances to show up. He showed up in the mess.
// God Meets Us in the Darkness
One of the most profound truths of the Christmas is this… God doesn't stand at a distance from our suffering. He enters into it.
Jesus didn't arrive with a solution that skipped over pain. He arrived as someone who would know pain intimately. Before his ministry even began, He knew what it was like to be misunderstood, displaced, and vulnerable. Later, He would know betrayal, abandonment, and death itself.
The God of Christmas is not a God who demands we get ourselves together before He'll engage with us. He's a God who comes close, especially to those who are hurting.
If you're in a season of waiting right now… waiting for healing, waiting for reconciliation, waiting for relief, waiting for answers… you're not waiting alone. The same God who sustained Israel through centuries of waiting is with you now in your waiting.
// What Hope Looks Like When It Hurts
Hope is not the same as pretending everything is fine.
Hope is not a fake positivity that dismisses real pain with empty phrases like "everything happens for a reason" or "just look on the bright side." That kind of talk doesn't honor the complexity of human suffering, and it certainly doesn't reflect the full story of Scripture.
Biblical hope is something different. It's the ability to hold sorrow and trust together in the same hand. It's the belief that God is present even when He feels absent. It's the conviction that our current circumstances are not final.
Hope doesn't mean your waiting will end tomorrow. It doesn't mean the empty chair will be filled, or the diagnosis will change, or the relationship will be restored. Sometimes the waiting continues. Sometimes the pain persists.
But hope does mean this… you will not be crushed by it.
Hope means that even in the darkness, there is a Light. Hope means that the same God who kept his promise to Israel after centuries of silence is still a promise keeping God today. Hope means that your story isn't over, even if this chapter is hard.
// Permission to Not Be Merry
Someone might need to hear this today… you have permission to not be merry.
You have permission to grieve. You have permission to feel the weight of what you're carrying. You have permission to sit this one out if you need to. You have permission to tell people, "I'm not okay right now, and that's okay."
The Christmas story doesn't demand that we manufacture joy we don't feel. It invites us to bring our full selves, including our sorrow, into the presence of a God who sees us, knows us, and loves us exactly as we are.
One of my favorite things about the gospel is how often Jesus made space for people's pain. He didn't rush them past it. He didn't minimize it. He wept with those who wept. He sat with the grieving. He made room for lament.
You can do the same today.
// Light in the Darkness
The prophet Isaiah wrote this about the coming Messiah:
“The people who walk in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light will shine.” [Isaiah 9:2]
The light doesn't eliminate the darkness instantly. It dawns. It breaks in gradually. But it comes.
If you're in the land of deep darkness today, I don't know when your light will fully dawn. I don't know when the waiting will end or when the healing will come. But I do know this… the light is coming.
It may not come today. It may not come this week or this month. But the same God who kept his promise to a waiting world 2000 years ago is still faithful. The same God who entered our darkness in a Bethlehem stable is still present in yours.
And tomorrow will come.
Christmas can be heavy and hopeful at the same time. You can grieve and still believe. You can feel the weight of the waiting while trusting that the waiting has meaning, even when you can't see it yet.
So if Christmas feels heavy today, that's okay. Bring the heaviness. Bring the grief. Bring the questions and the doubts and the disappointments.
Bring them to the manger, where God himself chose to be vulnerable, small, and present with us in our need.
That's the gift of Christmas, not that everything is always merry and bright, but that we are not alone in the darkness.
The Light is still coming.
Keep looking up,
Pastor Alan is the lead pastor of Allegheny Center Alliance Church. To find out more about ACAC, go here.
