From The Pulpit: Christmas tears
Every year our preschool has a Christmas program, and every year the children are unbelievably cute. The sight of little girls with halos in angel costumes and little boys dressed up as animals from the nativity scene is a sight to behold. Every year there are at least two kinds of students. There is always a child who sings loudly and joyfully and who can be heard above the rest, who is all smiles and waves at the crowd. Every year there is also at least one child who has a total panic attack when they see all those people looking at them, and who breaks into tears and runs to their teacher. These two students tell both sides of the Christmas story.
Why did Jesus come to earth? He came to fulfill prophecies. Besides the prophecies he fulfilled about being born of a virgin and in David’s City, Bethlehem, he fulfilled the five prophecies in Isaiah about God banishing sorrow. Is. 25:8 says, “The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; He will remove the disgrace of His people from all the earth. The Lord has spoken.” Jesus, the Prince of Peace, came to take away our disgrace by dying for our sins and rising again. Is. 51:11 speaks of a day when “Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.” Doesn’t that sound like Christmas?
We would rather associate words like “joy” and “merry” and “happy” with Christmas than “tears”, but we can only have these things when God takes away the cause of our tears. 1 John 3:8b says, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” Jesus did that when he went from the cradle to the cross to the empty tomb to the sky. As it says in Hebr. 2:14 and 15, “Since children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil – and free those who all their life were held in slavery by their fear of death.” Jesus became flesh so he could be the one who promises His children in Rev. 7:17 and 21:4 that He will “wipe every tear from their eyes.”
This year there was one unique child in our Christmas program. She had been crying, but she didn’t run and hide. Instead she bravely sang with a forced smile on her face and through her tears. Maybe you know someone like her, who will do their best to be happy for everyone else despite this Christmas being difficult for them because they suffered a painful loss. Don’t think they are weak if they cry. As one Christian devotion writer recently said, “Tears do not reflect a lack of faith. Tears are a gift from God that help to wash away the deep pain of loss.” Whichever child of God you are this year, the one who sings joyfully and cheers up all around them, the one who cries, or the one who smiles for others through your tears, know that you are equally loved by the one who came at Christmas to dry your tears eternally.
