A Prayer for the Uncertain Heart at Christmas

Comfort and joy—that is what is for you this year.
In one hand, you carry sorrow and pain that longs for comfort,
and in the other, you hold the joy that surrounds you this season.
And, my dear, that is okay. That’s Christian maturity. It’s okay to be hurting and hopeful,
to be sad and yet still singing, as a tear falls during your favorite Christmas song,
to feel unsettled about the future longing for a definite plan of security
and yet to stand unyielding in your faith that God has something good ahead.
You may not know it yet, and that is hard.

So my prayer for you this Christmas is this:
That you will be touched with an extra measure of awareness,
that you would feel the gentle reminders of peace all around you,
drawing your heart back to the present moment.
For it is only in the present that the spinning mind finds stillness,
where it can pause to notice the smile of a stranger, a ray of a sun through your window

or the smallest crescent moon,
shining softly in the twilight.

In the endless darkness of uncertainty,
there is a light that shines,
pointing your heart toward one thing—
one thing that will never fade.
and it will never be taken from you.
Not now, not ever.

So, blessings to you, my dear uncertain heart.
For in your vulnerability,
you lead me back to my certainty—
a certainty found in the unchanging love of God,
new and fresh every morning