A lament of suffering at Christmas, into Love

God rest you merry, gentlemen,
let nothing you dismay…Oh tidings of comfort and joy!

(“God rest you merry, gentlemen,” p.d.)

Yes, we’ve begun the Christmas season with all its “tidings of comfort and joy.” But are you suffering this year, as I am? Does this feel impossible to sing?

Is your Christmas song one that includes lament, because it doesn’t feel like “comfort and joy?” Does it feel more like dismay? Pain? Anxiety? Alone? Unloved? Weary?

Let’s sing-pray together as we turn toward our loving Father who does give us comfort and joy in the process, amid the challenge of suffering at Christmas time. Let’s lament, into Love, and ask Him, “Help me to remember.”

This is so hard, Father: 

I feel:

Help me to remember Who I’m turning to

My loving Father, I’m turning to You. Re-turning to You and Your promises, all based on who You are. This is perhaps Your most tremendous promise to me as Your child of covenant and everlasting love:

Oh God Who is love, You’ve shown Your love for me in Jesus’ birth, His perfectly righteous and obedient life, and His atoning death for me, taking my just penalty for the inborn sin that separated me from You and clothing me in Your righteousness instead.

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 Jn. 4:8-10 ESV).

Help me to remember Your gospel gift of grace, promises of love

I love You only because You first loved me! Your love for me has not changed, even though I’m hurting so much right now.

Sacred infant, all divine,
what a tender love was thine.

(“See, amid the winter’s snow,” Caswall, E., 1858)

I may feel lots of emotional turmoil today, as suffering squeezes. I may be trying and trying and trying, mustering up, filling the ache in different ways. So weary. Not sure how I can keep going like this. I may think I’m unloved and completely alone. Please remind me of Your promises of love. 

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? (Rom. 8:36 ESV) No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (Rom. 8:37 CSB, emphasis added).

Remind me that my life in Christ is a gift of Your love…for me

thus to come from highest bliss
down to such a world as this!

It’s really true.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him (Jn. 3:16-17 ESV).

Help me to rest in the truth of Your perfect love for me, never fearing You’re punishing me with suffering.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love (1 Jn. 4:18 ESV).

With this promise, help me live in today’s suffering with a deepened and very real and intimate awareness of Your steadfast love for me, today. Perfect me in Your love, Father.

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever! (1 Chron. 16:34 ESV).

Help me remember Your Spirit’s power within me, as I suffer this Christmas

Remember Christ our Savior
was born on Christmas Day
to save us all from Satan’s power
when we were gone astray.

Perhaps Satan is trying to entice me to forget! Protect my heart and thoughts, armoring up in Your promised love, shown to me in the salvation You’ve given to me in Christ. Because, if nothing at all can separate me from Your love, this means I am living together with Jesus right now, in today’s suffering.

But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled and put on the armor of faith and love, and a helmet of the hope of salvation. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess. 5:8-9 CSB).

It’s all through Jesus, because of Jesus, by the person and work of Jesus for me! I am together with Jesus and in Jesus! 

What a promise! What power! Trusting Your love-promise of living with my beloved Jesus now…as I suffer with the hard-normal trials that happen to everyone in this fallen world? This is Your promised victory for those in Christ! For it’s the fruit of Your indwelling Holy Spirit that I can rest in Your love for me. When I go astray, turn me back once again to Your love, Father. Hold me there and help me remember…I am loved, beloved in Christ.

Help me to remember and re-turn to Jesus in order to rest and even re-joice today

Rest me into merry, Father. Let nothing dismay me today. For I do remember Christ my Savior was born on Christmas Day. You have indeed powerfully saved me from Satan’s power through His life, death, and resurrection and You continue to do so, in Your everlasting and steadfast, covenant love for me as Your child.

Rest me in Your promises as I re-turn to Your love, amidst this suffering. Re-joice me in Your rest, with Your comfort…and joy. 

Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (Mt. 11:28 CSB, emphasis added).

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls (Mt. 11:29 CSB, emphasis added).

You will be delivered by returning and resting; your strength will lie in quiet confidence (Is. 30:15 CSB, emphasis added).

And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us (1 Jn. 4:16 CSB).

Oh tidings of comfort and joy! Comfort and joy! Oh tidings of comfort and joy!

Thank You, Father. In the name of the One who is my rest and salvation, Jesus Christ, amen.

Material adapted from Praying God’s Promises Into Suffering: A Devotional Bible Study Prayer Journal, Lauri A. Hogle, © 2023

Resources of Singing Christ’s Hope

Before my recent brain surgery, I placed professionally curated music therapy-inspired worship music playlists for this Christmas season into our subscriber-only resource library. If you too are suffering, and would be helped by singing what is true to your soul, returning, resting, quietly comforted in our joy as those who are His beloved followers of Jesus….those playlists are waiting for us.

Some are for times when it feels impossible to literally rest our bodies, due to pain or anxiety. Some are for times of numbed depression or loss.

I’m praying that you’ll be enveloped in our gospel rest when awake or sleep hours are difficult.

If this, or any of the other resources, would bless you, see below.