It wasn’t an easy year. This spring, our family experienced sudden loss; in the summer, my health was stressful; in the autumn, Israel was hit, and that hit me hard. But after two months of sharing serious prayer requests online, I hesitated to continue in December. Everyone’s trying to be happy right now, I thought.
During the pandemic, I richly enjoyed the live home concerts held by songwriter and worship leader Wendell Kimbrough. Many of his Scripture-based songs are joyful or peaceful, but at each concert, in an act of hospitality for the broken-hearted, he would say, “Now we’re entering a time of lament.”
Sometimes sad people can wonder:
“Where is the place in Christmas for me?”
Or “Where is the place at church for me?”
So when I shared Advent thoughts with my church family, I began:
I have to say that I am sad this morning.
Whether the time is Christmas, or the space is church, it’s appropriate to mention our grief, because Jesus came to the sad people.
Recently, while doing some research about hymn-writing, I learned a wondrous new word: canticle. I knew it had something to do with singing; I didn’t know that a canticle is a song in the Bible that’s not a psalm. Throughout the centuries, in the tradition of morning and evening prayer, people would often sing or recite one of these canticles. They often originated from people who were in tough spots, like Moses or the three worthies (who were about to be thrown into the fiery furnace), Hezekiah, Hannah, and Habakkuk — and then you have the New Testament canticles by Zacharias and Simeon and Mary.
Just before Christmas, I came across a song that expressed how I felt in many ways. While it focuses on Bethlehem, I want to speak a moment about Nazareth. Today Nazareth is a very busy town. It’s built on a hillside, and it’s very difficult to drive through, with streets so narrow that you might even want to pull in your mirrors. I’m told that the main city planner of Nazareth was the donkey. Where donkeys wanted to go up the hill is where the streets go up the hill, and they’re about as wide as a donkey that’s very heavily loaded. Nazareth is not a very fancy place to be, but it is the site of one of the most special experiences I had in Israel.
Yes, I was visiting the Land where the Bible took place, but I could not predict the moments when I would really comprehend where I was. Most often, my experience was: I’m in this place where something amazing happened, and I wonder why I can’t really connect with it. But one day, while I was in Nazareth, I visited the excavations below the Church of the Annunciation. As my professor was talking, I realized, My goodness, this is where the Word became flesh.
We think about Bethlehem as if the Christmas story starts there. It doesn’t. It starts in Nazareth in a tiny little home. And there an angel came to Mary with the good news — the best news for sad hearts — and said, “Hey, God is here.”
Elisabeth Adams 