Christmas Confession
Understanding Our Deepest Longing
Psalm 63:1-8; Matthew 1:23
Excitement Overload
I’m going to share my embarrassing Christmas story. The tale of why my parents let us open all our gifts on Christmas Eve. I drove them to it. Did I use whining, tantrums or threaten to run away? Nope. Did I cajole or charm—not those either. Full of excitement to receive my presents, my childhood body simply could not wait until Christmas morning.
I would throw up in the middle of the night.
My mother quickly tired of cleaning up my avalanche of exploding anticipation. So, they pivoted to a different strategy to outwit my hyper-enthusiasm for Jesus’ birthday and Santa’s arrival with gifts.
Under the new plan, Christmas Eve began with our 1960’s finger-food buffet served on the coffee table. The adults chatted on the couch and kids rolled around on the floor bumping into the Christmas tree. Siblings and cousins enjoyed grabbing the miniature toothpick-secured snacks at will. Best of all, and only once a year, my mom placed a giant bowl of Christmas M&M’s right in the middle of the spread. Freely accessible at coffee table level, we kids helped ourselves to the red and green candies in jubilant abandon. Added to the bites of cheese ball, mini-franks, and date cookies rolled in powdered sugar, no wonder my stomach overflowed with holiday joy.
After feasting, Dad and Grandaddy would invite all kids in attendance to go on a car ride after the meal. “Let’s drive around the neighborhood to see if we can spot Santa on the rooftops delivering gifts.” Wink, wink. We piled in the car and hunted through Christmas light displays, front yard nativity scenes, and plastic statue versions of St. Nick, trying our best to spot the real Santa at work. However, without fail, we would return home to find out Santa had already dropped off his load at our house while we were gone. “You just missed him!” my mom would say when we got back. We fell for it every time. But we rushed to the tree and tore open our gifts before we went to bed on Christmas Eve. Because Santa came early, my tummy held on to the M&M’s and my mom got to sleep in.
Longing for the Future
“...even as an adult, waiting for what is yet to be can still challenge my emotional balance.”
Eventually, my high-strung stomach calmed, and I matured enough to celebrate Jesus more than gifts from a pretend Santa. But even as an adult, waiting for what is yet to be can still challenge my emotional balance. A hyperfocus on the future can spiral me into anxious anticipation, whether reaching for an aspiration or waiting on unanswered prayer. Growing up, if my mom found me dwelling on the “not yet” with too much melancholy longing, she would tell me, “Don’t waste today by waiting for tomorrow to arrive.”
“On and on, each step gained revealed another layer in the nesting doll of human desire.”
Even in the echo of wise words, life unfolds in stages of waiting and longing. Each anticipated milestone, once achieved, signals ahead to the next destination which holds its own future promise. In elementary school, I longed to be old enough for a later bedtime and to decide what I wanted to eat for dinner. After graduating high school, my parents urged me to discover my life’s calling after I changed my college major three times. When I finally achieved my degree and moved out on my own, I longed to find a spouse who would explore life with me and love me for my true self. Once married, my husband and I felt an inner drive to create our own family legacy, whether through nurturing children or our dream career accomplishments. On and on, each step gained revealed another layer in the nesting doll of human desire.
A Deeper Desire
Now in the later season of life, I have passed through and enjoyed those major human milestones. The desire for them kept me moving forward. Each one brought the anticipated sweetness and a measure of satisfaction. Yet I still experience a deeper wanting that continues unabated. It flows underneath the movement of life’s passages, a search for the final nesting doll. C.S. Lewis describes the feeling well with his words, “…the inconsolable wound with which man is born.”
Clarity from King David
The Bible Psalms give poignant voice to our emotions in their various expressions. In a particular poem, before David was king and while exiled in the wilderness, he contemplates and discerns the face of yearning. Deprived of his basic necessities—home, friends, safety, and daily bread, David receives a moment of clarity within his destitution. He cries out from the deepest place of need, which reveals what he longs for most:
“God, you are my God; I eagerly seek you. I thirst for you; my body faints for you in a land that is dry, desolate, and without water. “(Psalm 63:2)
In physical distress and at a low point of emotion, David expresses the bottom line. His “inconsolable wound” bleeds for union with his God—beyond water, food, safety, acceptance, and self-actualization. Every longing he has echoes and points to finding contentment in the embrace of God.
Advice for Longing
David’s Psalm provides instruction for our times of longing and waiting. His next statements offer help for our churning emotions, even within difficult circumstances:
“So I gaze on you in the sanctuary to see your strength and your glory. My lips will glorify you because your faithful love is better than life. So I will bless you as long as I live; at your name, I will lift up my hands. You satisfy me as with rich food; my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. When I think of you as I lie on my bed, I meditate on you during the night watches because you are my helper; I will rejoice in the shadow of your wings. I follow close to you; your right hand holds on to me.” (Psalm 63: 2-8)
David begins by turning his gaze, his focus and meditation, to God’s nature and beauty: “your strength and glory.” His view cascades into a response of worship. David’s psalm of longing blooms into a love letter to God as he realizes why he worships:
…your faithful love is better than life. (vs.3)
You satisfy me… (vs. 5)
…you are my helper… (vs. 7)
…your right hand holds on to me… (vs. 8)
David’s deepest and unabated desire thirsts for God himself. Physical necessities and emotional support beckon him in the immediate, but underneath he recognizes that intimacy with God draws him beyond any temporal yearning.
Desire Fulfilled
In compassionate understanding of the hunger God designed to satisfy within us, he sent messages of hope throughout history. The disciple Matthew records the words of an angel messenger who repeats the Old Testament prophet Isaiah:
“See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel, which is translated ‘God is with us.’” (Matt. 1:23)
The sweet ache of divine yearning will continue throughout life until we arrive body and soul into God’s presence. For a time, we may enjoy the plastic Santas and artificial lights in excited anticipation. While we pursue blessings, let us remember the Face of our deepest desire. He has already come to us in the dark night, delivering the gifts of love, joy, and peace that wait under the nail-battered tree.
Where can you find peace in Psalm 63 during this season of heightened desires?
Source Note:
Lewis, C. S. The Space Trilogy. First Scribner trade paperback edition. (New York, NY: Scribner, 2011).
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