Part 4: How to Unwrap Hope When All Days Feel the Same

My 7-year-old still sings that it’s a “silent midnight,” and perhaps she’s right. Perhaps it was in the stillest part of the night—the most unexpected hour—that the sky alit with blazing glory. The shepherds were certainly surprised. Their day had begun, routine and ordinary. The sun set softly, all the norm. Even as darkness came and the stars came out, all, all still felt the same. The same as yesterday. And the day before. And the day before.

Perhaps, as we enter the week of Christmas, you’re feeling a little like the shepherds too—like all the days blend into one another, like all the days are the same.

It’s easy to feel swallowed by the mundane, drained by the ordinary, the menial tasks on repeat, the absence of hope that tomorrow will be any different.

It’s easy to see what’s right before us, to feel heavy the weight of taking care of all the things. The shepherds had sheep to tend and we have projects to complete and laundry to wash on repeat and perhaps kids to tuck in and feed. And it can all feel less than spectacular.

But God. God likes to enter when our eyes are cast down, when we’ve lost all hope that things can turn around.

He joins us in the mundane and ordinary, gifts us Himself, gives us eyes to see His glory.

In the silence of night, we see light.

In the space-in-between, we hear the hush of holy, the rush of glory. We feel the heaven-ward pull of our eyes to the light.

What a glorious light it is that reaches into the depths of our endless midnights, sets our hearts on a new course. What joy we find in the pursuit of Him.

Another string of days that feel the same

The Maji, they too saw light, and they couldn’t stop looking for it until they found it. For months or more they traveled through dry and parched land, but their eyes looked up and they drank the light. Let’s read their story:

Jesus was born in Bethlehem near Jerusalem during the reign of King Herod. After Jesus’ birth a group of spiritual priests from the East came to Jerusalem and inquired of the people, “Where is the child who is born king of the Jewish people? We observed his star rising in the sky and we’ve come to bow before him in worship.”
King Herod was shaken to the core when he heard this, and not only him, but all of Jerusalem was disturbed when they heard this news. So he called a meeting of the Jewish ruling priests and religious scholars, demanding that they tell him where the promised Messiah was prophesied to be born.
“He will be born in Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,” they told him. “Because the prophecy states:
   And you, little Bethlehem,
    are not insignificant among the clans of Judah,
    for out of you will emerge
    the Shepherd-King of my people Israel!”
Then Herod secretly summoned the spiritual priests from the East to ascertain the exact time the star first appeared. And he told them, “Now go to Bethlehem and carefully look there for the child, and when you’ve found him, report to me so that I can go and bow down and worship him too.”
And so they left, and on their way to Bethlehem, suddenly the same star they had seen in the East reappeared! Amazed, they watched as it went ahead of them and stopped directly over the place where the child was. And when they saw the star, they were so ecstatic that they shouted and celebrated with unrestrained joy. When they came into the house and saw the young child with Mary, his mother, they were overcome. Falling to the ground at his feet they worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure boxes full of gifts and presented him with gold, frank-incense, and myrrh. Afterward they returned to their own country by another route because God had warned them in a dream not to go back to Herod.
Matthew 2:1-12 TPT

These learned men saw a star, knew it was His. And though they had yet to know Him, they knew that He deserved their worship. So they sought him. Over long days. Days that displayed the same scene again and over again.

But the path didn’t look mundane.

Perhaps it’s because they were looking beyond the immediate, beyond the sand swirling around camel feet, beyond hot sun baking their backs.

They were living days that could have felt monotonous, but they didn’t see it that way.

And perhaps, you and I too have choice in the way we see.

A choice of the eyes

I’ve learned the past couple years how my default vision is not the same way all others see. We each have our own tint of glasses through which we view the world. And when it’s just me looking, I might miss something. Something important. Simply because I don’t see it from the angle I’m looking.

I find it interesting that there were more than one shepherd, more than one wise man. We may not know definitively how many there were of either, but there were certainly more than one.

Perhaps they needed each others’ vision to truly see the light. Perhaps they helped each other see.

And you and I? We may need help too from those around us to more fully see how God is a gift and we get to unwrap the hope that heralds His coming and lingers in His wake.

God gave us Himself at Christmas—this we’ve been unwrapping, layer by layer. But He gave us more. Wrapped in the details of Christ’s birth, we find that He also showed how we need each other. How together, we see Him better.

Wrapped in the details of Christ’s birth, we find that He also showed how we need each other.

This year your Christmas gathering may be smaller. Your Christmas traveling may be abandoned. But you are not alone.

Who are the people near you—the ones beneath your roof, the ones across the street, the neighbors you don’t yet know? They too are a gift. And this God whose name is Hope and who is full of glory and light—He gifts only what is good.

He knows how we desperately need Him to light our silent midnights, and how together with others we more fully behold His light.

This Christmas, may we have eyes opened to see the gift of Him and the gift of our families and near-neighbors.

May we see how deeply He cares—for us, for each of them. How He longs to be seen, adored, by all.

How in the middle of the midnights, the unvarying and wearisome stretches, He comes like a light, like a brilliant display of glory ripping through the heavens. He leads us on and in—so as we unwrap hope as a gift, He wraps us in arms big enough to hold all of us.

This Christmas, as we muster the merry and bright, let’s also let sweeping eyes see that there are others near and we don’t have to unwrap hope alone. If these last days of Advent feel routine and we feel ourselves insignificant, may we see how, just as we need others to help us see, so too do others need us to help them see.

Jesus, You are Lord, You are Yahweh, You are the “with-us God,” You are the gift of hope and goodness and light. Grant us, with those near us, together-vision to see how You enter into our silent midnights, deposit Your presence as a present. May our merry this year be not willed out of obligation or expectation, but an overflow of the joy of unwrapping hope, of more fully seeing You. In Your holy and precious name, Jesus, we pray. Amen.

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