Are you going through a rough time this Christmas? We may be feeling burdened or crushed by circumstances, or emotionally broken, or inescapably trapped in a situation that is harmful or painful to us, or overwhelmingly sad because someone we love has died.
God can seem very distant from us when we do go through these kinds of experiences. Yet the Son of God was born in a filthy stable, into a poor Jewish family, under brutal Roman occupation, and, through much of His life, was considered an outcast by His own people, who eventually had Him falsely charged and sentenced to death on a cross.
This means that whatever suffering we go through, the Son of God not only knows what it is like to go through it – and worse; but by faith in Him, He is also with us in it now. He does this because of His love for us, but also to give us grace to sustain us through any situation and heal is.
This healing is spiritual, but at the same time, physical and material. It includes God saving us from sin and giving us a new life by grace, and it includes God providing for our physical and material need – sometimes through new opportunities that open for us, sometimes through the kindness and generosity of others, sometimes just plain miraculously, and ultimately in raising us from the dead to eternal life.
Reach out to Him for healing this Christmas!
Grace and peace, Jonathan.