Advent Love for the Broken Heart

One of the clients I work for is a local independent bookstore. I have worked with them in some capacity for almost ten years now. I’ve worked and managed their cafe, I became a bookseller, I ran events, I managed the children’s department (my favorite!), and now I remotely manage their social media and marketing efforts.

In the days surrounding Thanksgiving, something changes about this bookstore. The extra shelves become packed with overstock. The gift section expands well beyond reason. Foot traffic increases dramatically and the store daily transforms into an insanely busy hub of Christmas shopping.

Because the holiday season has such an influx of busyness, everything extra that’s not pertinent to the everyday floor management is pushed aside - our weekly marketing meeting takes a pause until after December, extraneous tasks are taken off the to-do list, new ideas are saved for the new year. The store gets into survival mode and hunkers down until January. They make sales, help customers, clean up the store, and receive new inventory. Everything else can wait.

I fear we tend to act this way towards grief during the holidays. We’ve talked about this before in our Advent study, but whether the grief is new or from year’s past, it seems extraneous during the Christmas season. There are holiday parties, family gatherings, gift exchanges, and joyful traditions that take priority. Grief doesn’t seem to have a place amongst the Christmas cheer. It’s best to just push it down until after the holidays. Let it resurface in January and we can deal with it then, right?

Praise the Lord he does not share this thought. In fact, the theme of Advent love has quite the opposite belief.

The love of our God is so much greater than anyone of us can understand. It is steadfast, it is eternal, it is sacrificial, it is perfect. There is one other beautiful aspect of God’s love that he has been so kind to reveal to me over this past year. It is readily available to those who are grieving. Take a look at this truth described in the Psalms:

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. Psalm 147:3

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
    and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
    my salvation and my God.

My soul is cast down within me;
    therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
    from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
    at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
    have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
    and at night his song is with me,
    a prayer to the God of my life. Psalm 42:5-8

Cast your burden on the Lord,
and he will sustain you;
he will never permit
the righteous to be moved. Psalm 55:22

The Advent love we celebrate does not call us to suppress our brokenness until after the holidays. It does not see our heartache as something extraneous. Our pain is not out of place. Rather, the love of our God that was manifested in the manger beckons us to come and find refuge. The Lord isn’t far away from us when our heart is broken but is even closer than we realize. His love heals our hearts in a deeper way than any temporary balms this world offers. His steadfast love is with us when our soul is downcast. We are called to bring our burdens and cast them upon him. He is faithful to sustain us.

Jesus did not come to save those who seemed to have it all together. He came to rescue his wayward children. For those who believe in him, he came as strength for the weak, rest for the weary, and hope for the brokenhearted.

We do not need to hide away our pain and our grief until the holidays are over. There is no need to put on a brave face in front of our Savior. The love of God that we celebrate at Christmas beckons us to come to him and find a hope that is unshakeable, a peace with God we could never attain on our own, a joy that will abound despite our circumstances, and a love that meets us at our absolute lowest points and saves our weary souls.

Let this Pauline prayer help you worship our great God and his great love:

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:14-19