If there is any year when I’ve felt the depth of the anticipation of Christmas, this is it.

I don’t mean the usual “Christmas is coming” kind of excitement (or is it pressure?) that feels tight in the chest and like high-pitched squeals, but the meaning of the day, the depth of the implications for life that Christmas brings.

I’ve felt the energy of seeing a new “holiday” – first day back to basketball, day that shops reopen, and time for public arts and sport competitions have all excited me – and, like you, I’ve seen the long-awaited date move.

It’s maddening, really: we allow ourselves to hope, and then the hope is delayed.

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12, NIV

This verse is a proverb (yes, it’s in the name), a piece of wisdom passed down over centuries and millennia. The nature of these kinds of phrases isn’t that they’re prescriptive: maybe if we push off a hope, then their heart will give out? No, it’s meant as a statement about something that is, a reality that we have felt in a painful way in 2020.

We’ve patiently, or not-so-patiently, waited, anticipating the end of this insanity. Whether a global pandemic or personal health issues, an election or the work situation you’d like to change, family dynamics or significant life events that came without consideration for our preparedness for them, we have hoped for an end, for resolution, for new beginnings and healthy starts.

And over and over, we have seen our hopes deferred.

But a longing fulfilled? I’ll bet you know how that feels. It’s the relief that comes after we receive the object of our hope. I can point to fulfilled longings in my life. Playing basketball after injury, finding a job and living situation when I had nowhere to go, and the opportunity to write on a more consistent basis are a few.  If these look like “a tree of life” as the proverb describes, then they give us a fresh perspective and a pep in our step. I know my fulfilled longings have done that for me!

Christmas acknowledges and celebrates the coming of the deferred hope for which humanity has cried: new life, freedom, and wholeness to know life fully with our Creator. God came to us in bodily form to die on a tree, so that we could stop striving for our picture of perfection, turn to walk in his ways, and be made new.

This hope has a name: Jesus.

And Jesus, as both God and man, was both here with us and lives even now in his resurrection. That means our hope didn’t end with Jesus’s time on earth. Our hope lives, too! And that gives us reason to celebrate.

So, while we hope and wait – for a baby on the way, for the buildup of habits to become goals, for reunion with family and community, and more – we can rest in the reminder that the greatest Hope has come. When we believe that hope has come, we can approach the throne of God with confidence in the middle of our pain and trial and questions. God is not afraid of our wondering. God knows and sees, and God continues to walk with us in the hope that we have despite the broken circumstances around us.

Whatever your waiting looks like, I pray you can also find the hope. It may not always look the way you planned, but the presence of God is with you and will walk with you, day by day, because He has already come.

Have a great holiday, friends.