A reflection on life, death and this season of hope and joy

I wrote this a little over 4 years ago and rediscovered it on my computer today. Thought I'd publish it for all those who don't receive the Birkdale/Beachhaven parish's Ripples magazine (and maybe never will).

I don’t want to read more into it than is actually there, but as you know, my daughter Miriam (Hebrew for Mary) has given birth to a son – and so close to Christmas! As with Miriam of old, (she who was betrothed to Joseph) my Miriam knew from early on that she was to have a son – though she had an ultra-sound scan, not an angelic visitation. Weeks before he was born we all knew he would be called Liam, just as that other Miriam knew, well in advance, that her boy was to be called Jesus.

I had an epiphanal moment; an inner flash of lightning that lit my soul from one horizon to the other, one evening moment prior to Liam’s birth. Sue and I were in a crush of bodies in the aisle of the Bridgeway Theatre, at the end of a movie. We were standing behind a young family, waiting to move toward the door. The mother had her daughter on her hip, a girl of not more that 3 or 4 years old, and looking at them together, the significance of Liam’s impending birth and all that it promised quite overwhelmed me with a wonderful sense of joy and hope. My family know what a ‘softie’ I can be and so won’t be surprised to hear that my eyes watered up at that moment.

The week of Liam’s birth (he was born Friday 15^th, November) was an emotional roller coaster ride. On Friday 8 November Sue took a phone call from a friend in Hamilton. He was so overcome with grief he could barely speak. His eldest son’s young wife had died in a car accident the previous night. Sue and I had been at their wedding about two years ago.

We went to Hamilton to the funeral the following Wednesday all the while wondering if our daughter might go into labour while we were away from Auckland. I could scarcely begin to imagine how it must have been for our friends and for their son. While my life was filled with a new hope and joy, all their hopes and dreams had been shattered in a single instant.

I don’t expect anyone to be able to adequately explain to me where God is at times like this. It is a very old question asked often. Where was God when Herod ordered the slaying of all male children younger than two years old in Bethlehem, 2000 years ago? Where was he when Jesus cried “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” from the cross?

We all know how hard Christmas is for those who have recently lost loved ones. It will be especially hard for our friends coming so soon after their daughter-in-law’s death. Where do they look for hope and for new meaning for their future? Right now they are having trouble seeing past their pain and desolation. We can only pray that, as they remember and celebrate the Child of Bethlehem, they can draw from the deeper well of that hope his coming and his abiding presence with us, brings.

Christmas, like a birth, is a festival of hope and of joy, and the child in the manger the sign, the reminder, that, in God, all darknesses end in dawns of hope, joy and promise – just as the pain of labour ends with the joy of a new life in this world, a baby to have and to hold. For my friends too, in God’s good time, will come a moment, perhaps like mine in that cinema, when it will dawn on them that hope and joy are coming anew into their lives, and even though it might be the middle of June, it will suddenly feel like Christmas.

I hope Christmas feels like Christmas for you too, and that you catch hold of that sense of joy and hope that Jesus’ coming brings, and swing into the dawn of the New Year firmly clutching its coat-tails.

Richard Gillard