Christmas is easy to love—food, family, traditions, and the songs that carry our memories. But some years the weight of life makes the season feel thinner than it used to. That’s why I chose “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Longfellow’s carol holds the joy of Christ’s birth in one hand and the ache of a broken world in the other. He knew loss: a tragic house fire that took his wife and scarred his face; a nation torn by the Civil War; a son wounded in battle. His words, “For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth,” speak for anyone whose experience doesn’t seem to match what they believe.
Scripture doesn’t avoid that tension. David felt like a drowning man, too exhausted to cry, too numb to eat. Jeremiah stood among the ruins of Jerusalem and wept over a city that once shone with God’s presence. Yet neither of them pretended. They lamented honestly, and then they remembered what is truer than their pain: “The Lord lives… Great is your faithfulness.” Longfellow’s carol echoes that move of faith: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep. The wrong shall fail, the right prevail.” When despair shouts, we cling to what God has said.
We also keep the end of the story in view. God made a good world; our sin fractured it. Jesus stepped into that fracture—born in Bethlehem, crucified and risen—so sinners could be forgiven and reconciled to God. And the last chapter is already written: a new heaven and new earth where God dwells with His people, wipes every tear, and ends death forever. Some peace breaks in now—God mends relationships, heals wounds, steadies hearts—but full peace is certain when Christ makes all things new.
So if this Christmas doesn’t feel like Christmas, you’re not faithless—you’re human. Bring your lament to God. Hold fast to His Word. Fix your eyes on Jesus. Let the bells—literal or remembered—remind you that the angels’ announcement is not wishful thinking but a promise secured by the cross and guaranteed by the empty tomb. The world won’t always feel like this. Christ is near, and the story ends in peace.
