Faith isn't really faith till it's believing in the dark. When the fog closes in, and almost pushes the air out of your lungs, and you still believe like Job. “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”
It's saying Hallelujah and Praise the Lord long before the answer comes. It's believing He is good, He is involved and He cares enough to even be working behind my back for something amazing yet to come.
It's celebrating Christmas when you feel like being a Grinch.
It's holding on to hope for a situation when you would rather let go and never become tethered to this whatever it is again.
It's saying Thank you for all the hard things because you believe that hardness can not last longer then Eternal joy and life. Thank you for the hard days as much as the good days.
I observed some illustrations from the candle holder nativity set I have. In front, I'd set a candle as a symbol of my own life and surrender to His story. It burned out long before any other candle. Just like that, the real Story of course Christmas has been around much longer than I have and will continue to draw people to God long after I am gone. My short lived life and all the hard things of it are but small moments in light of Eternity. Does any of the drama even matter in light of the eternal?The last of the 3 candles to burn out of the Nativity set was the central part of the story. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. It's hard to stay Grinchish when you realize that the Story this nativity set symbolizes happened in ordinary, unassuming ways, yet it was powerful enough to save the whole world when the time was right. All the ordinary things I might grumble about may just be the route that leads to something extraordinary. If this Central Story of the Bible is an example for the way God normally works, we are in good company.
So if life has handed you a set of circumstances that makes you feel like being a grumpy Grinch, choose faith anyway. Choose to praise anyway. Choose to cling to hope in spite of you name it. It seems God gets more glory from the bedraggled Grinch who chooses to believe then from the prosperous choir members who sing His praise regularly.
Go ahead... Believe Him anyway.
You see, the Story didn't end with Christmas. It continued to Easter, and still isn't finished. But let's take a look at that very bad day when Jesus died on the Cross. God called it Good Friday, but I doubt the people who were there would have thought anything was good about it. The light went out, and there was utter darkness that day. But it was Good, really Good. The story wasn't over. What happened in the dark, was what changed the world forever. If there never would have been a really dark day, there never would have been a transforming burst of Light. We would be stuck in perpetual hopelessness.
Back to Christmas. We celebrate it in the winter, the darkest and coldest time of the year. We turn on the lights to remember that in the darkest hour, after 400 years of darkness, the Light came. Jesus didn't come in a time that was merry and bright. He came when times were hard to illuminate the darkness.
So celebrate anyway. The way to Merry and Bright started in the dark.
