Finding Hope with Anna: A Christmas of Grief and Grace
A reflection by Dave Horsfall, St Hild Academic and Formation Tutor
This Christmas can hold both joy and sorrow. But like Anna in the temple, we look to the God who meets us in our lament and brings a hope that lasts.
‘This will be our first Christmas as a family since my mother-in-law passed away. She had lived and suffered with young-onset Alzheimer’s for more than a decade and died well before her time. It will be a strange time for us and a very different Christmas experience from the last ten years. We are heading into Christmas carrying a sadness. There are also other family members who are unwell and weighty situations that will occupy our thoughts and conversations. There will be lament and sorrow.
This does not mean there won’t be laughter, games, Christmas films and tasty food, of course there will. We’ll have moments where all our cares will drift to the back of our minds, and we will enjoy the here and now. We’ll find peace at evening carol services and levity at opening a gift in church on Christmas day. We’ll smile politely when receiving poorly chosen gifts and grimace as we realise we bought the game or book that someone already owns, all the normal Christmas traditions. There will be joy and merriment.
This reminds me of Anna, who we meet in the temple in Luke 2:36-38. We are told she had once been married but had many decades of being a widow. I wonder how much lament and sorrow had stayed with her. We are also told she worshipped night and day, fasting and praying. She chose to pursue peace and joy in the Lord. Lastly, we are told she was waiting for the time of redemption. She was waiting for the time when sadness, pain, sorrow and lament would be soothed, and rolled back, and the time when contentment, joy, peace, rest and satisfaction would unfold. Lament, joy and hope are so often what we carry into Christmas.
Where could Anna look for this hope? She looked to the infant child being carried in his mother’s arms. This sign that God himself had come to his people. A humble yet powerful act which would turn the empires of the world upside down and raise up the humble, the hungry, the mournful and the needy. A sign that God is with us, God has acted for us, and God will come again. He is with us in our lament, has acted to bring us joy, and he will come again to usher in the age that we long for, the age which Christmas reminds us of and points ahead to. The Lord is who we need this Christmas, and he will reveal himself to us in the way we need him most.’