I like to try to keep up with what’s going on in your lives.  I love to rejoice with you.  I also want to be there for you, with you, when the news or the times seem difficult, uncertain, overwhelming.  While people have emerged from the mess this time two years ago, I don’t see that anyone has really recovered.  The damage is done.  The stress hasn’t gone away: it’s just re-distributed itself.  The long-term consequences of all that we’ve now lived through remain with us.  We can’t make it go away.  We can’t make it just like it was.  I never said I was an optimist, but I do have faith.  Where there is faith, there is always hope.  Where there is faith and hope, there is always love.  On those days when faith seems feeble, hope and love can carry us through.  When hope seems futile, faith and love support us.  And when love staggers and feels weak, lost, and lonely, faith and hope lift us.

New Year’s Day is, in itself, just a day, but people still want to invest something in it, see something in it, some hope of possibility.  We know the day itself has no power, but it is a beginning, and so it is also an ending.  What was—though its effects and consequences may linger—what was is now done; we look now to what will be, to what might be—possibility.

What do we want to leave behind, leave back in the year now over?  Our sorrow.  Our sickness.  Our pain.  Our weakness.  Our tiredness.  Our frustration.  Woes at work.  Woes with friendships.  Woes in our families.  Woes at church.  We want joy . . . peace . . . comfort.  The weight of what you and I have been bearing leaves its mark.  We can feel bent low.  We do, more often than we want to!

Joy, peace, and comfort do not come with forgetting our burdens.  When we are under the burden, we do not forget it.  How do we get out from under the burden?  The world offers many options, each with its own price.  Jesus has this answer: burdens must be carried.  What kind of answer is that?  How is that helpful?  It amazes me how considerate we are of one another: we wouldn’t think of putting our burden on anyone else.  We know they can’t carry it.  It’s our burden, and it crushes us!  We don’t want to crush each other; it wouldn’t be polite.  And Paul tells us to bear one another’s burdens, even as he also tells us we must each carry our own (Gal 6).

There is no escape from the burden, but there is salvation.  There is hope.  There is faith.  There is love.  We have Christ and we have one another.  I can’t lift your burden from you; I can’t cast it away, cause you to forget it.  I won’t dazzle you with distractions.  All that I can do, all any of us can do for one another, is share the burden, get our shoulders under it, together, and lift, and walk.  This is why we invite one another to unburden our hearts to each other.  Let us pray for one another.  We can walk together, talk together, work together, and consider our destination.  A hike is just a heavy slog until someone is walking with you, maybe humming, even singing, pointing out things along the way, and calling our attention upward to the goal of the journey: sometimes we can begin to see it, through the trees, over the hills.

I’m not really here to make you happy or make you laugh, though I don’t want to make you sad.  I’m here to recall us to our joy in Christ.  What is joy?  Durable peace, resilient faith, steadfast love, committed devotion.  Paul suffered much yet remained constantly joyful.  In his letters, Paul is always looking forward, remembering what God has done for us and living in eager expectation of the fulfillment of God’s promise.  He writes to his fellow believers in Rome: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18).  Some translations put that as “revealed in us”: “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us”  To us, in us—there is no conflict: God’s glory will be revealed to us by being revealed in us.  Oh, the joy in store for us!

But we get weighed down under our present problems.  Oh, they’re heavy enough, quite real enough.  We sense they won’t be going away soon.  I’ve always enjoyed working out with weights.  Now, I never have loved the feeling of muscle fibers snapping, but I do like the feeling of being challenged.  It’s training; there’s a goal.  It’s difficult work, but over time there’s a change, transformation: greater strength.  What good is greater strength?  Greater strength can bear a heavier load.  Well who wants that?!  Greater strength can also begin to help bear another’s load.  Being transformed for strength, endurance, being transformed for service—this is grace!  Grace strengthens us for one another and for God.  God is revealing His glory to us, in us, by slow degrees, even difficult, challenging, fiber-snapping degrees.  Love by itself can’t see it.  Hope by itself won’t see it, but faith, hope, and love together do see, and feel, and praise, even when we seem to be at our breaking point, because we have on our side   one who was broken for us, and he is strongest of all, full of grace, and he feeds us, and we become strong.

In a way we in these days might also be coming to understand, the Old Testament prophet Micah lived through some truly grim times of social breakdown, a sharp decline in faithfulness, an ugly decay in morals.  He describes hard times for people of faith.  Considering the list of hard griefs he compiled, Micah responds this way: “But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me” (Micah 7:7).  The watching and the waiting are not passive, beloved.  We work while we watch and wait.  We work knowing that our God will hear us.  He will hear our cries of incomprehension, sorrow, hurt, and frustration.  He will hear our prayers for light, peace, and comfort.  And He will answer.

What is His answer?  Isn’t it here before us, with us?  This Word, that cross, baptismal font, table?  God strengthens us for the journey, our walk together through this year, new and old, brimming with apprehensions and uncertainties and full also with the hope of possibility: not an empty, foolish hope.  Our hope is the breath of God, refreshing us.  Watch and you will see.  Wait and you will hear.  Work and you will learn.  Receive the grace God has always intended for you; take courage from God; taste the love of God for you, now and always.

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  How far we are from comprehending God’s decisions and His ways!  For everything comes from Him and exists by His power and is intended for His glory.  To Him be the glory forever.