Longing for Christmas

If you have had any experience with celebrating the Advent season (at least, any experience beyond eating chocolates from an Advent calendar), you are probably familiar with the emphasis on longing. It has always struck me as such an odd thing to emphasize during a season celebrating light and joy and God’s gracious gift of salvation.

But this year, I have found myself longing more than ever before for the Christmases of “the good old days.” (Which, of course, I never would have thought worth longing for at the time.)

Between cancelled events, quarantined family members, and the strange in-betweenness of my particular season of life, I look back on the joyful memories of Christmas past and wish it could all be just like it was then.

If I’m honest, those memories tend to be just a little idealized, and I know that there is much I choose not to remember about those “good old days.” And yet, even acknowledging that those days weren’t as perfect as they now seem, I find myself longing for them just the same.

As out of place as it seems, longing serves a similar purpose to waiting, which is what Advent is all about. My sister-in-law recently pointed out that looking back on the ages God’s people spent waiting and longing for the Savior to come teaches us how to wait.

Consider these passages from Scripture:

“For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” (Romans 8:22-23)

“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.” (2 Corinthians 5:1-2)

You see, my longing for Christmases past is nothing else but the longing for perfection. I long because I want things to be different, to be better. But as a Christian, as a stranger and pilgrim in this world, I should be longing for perfection, but not any kind of earthly perfection. Just as creation groans under the weight of the consequences of man’s sin, I also ought to groan, to long for the day when I shall be “clothed upon” with my heavenly body, freed once and for all from the sin nature that plagues me here on earth.

All this thinking about longing has made me wonder: am I longing for Christ’s second coming and my new, glorified, sin-free body with the same fervency as the old testament believers longed for Christ’s first coming? Or am I too comfortably settled in with my sin nature to care?

Longing should be a part of life for a Christian, but it is never meant to lead us into despondency or despair. It should instead bring us to the place of hope and joy.

Even though we live in a broken world, with broken bodies, fighting against our own sin natures, we have the assurance that all will one day be made right: that we will experience the perfection we long for. No wonder the psalmist declares,

“Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men! For He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness.” (Psalm 107:8-9)