Tears: the human price of selfish power

Just yesterday, amid the flurry of “year in review” articles, I saw this headline: “A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year.” * What do you think: was it?

As I review 2024, I can think of several disappointments, from global developments to personal failures. And I can also recall positive things, from rewarding growth in personal relationships to work accomplishments to national and global trends that gave me hope. As I look back from the lofty perch of my senior years across the span of my life, I see that the pattern of 2024 was pretty much the same as that of every year I’ve had the privilege of living. Some good, some bad; some dull, some bright and shiny and energizing. The year Patricia did me the honor of marrying me, or the year in which Resurrection invited me to join the staff, were also years that held disappointments (I am, after all, a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan!). The three successive years when our family’s summer plans were interrupted by the death of one of my grandparents, or the year now 11 years ago when my wife died, held much sadness and loss, yet were not years of unrelieved darkness without moments brightened by human and divine caring and desired accomplishments. On this New Year’s Day, I begin (as I aim to begin every day, a goal I do not always succeed in living up to) by praying, “Thank you, God, for the gift of another day of life.”

Our Scripture reading today reminds us that Jesus’ life on earth, like ours, did not take place in a world of beautiful, soothing pastel colors. Jesus did not glide through life with a halo over his head, surrounded by nothing but applause and enthusiastic acceptance. But that was the point. If our world (whether ruled by Herod’s and Rome’s violent tyranny, or by today’s swirling kaleidoscope of self-serving and occasionally idealistic ruling powers) were the way God meant it to be, Jesus’ mission to save and restore wouldn’t have been needed. Herod’s violence in Bethlehem (and it was hideous and chilling) moved Matthew to recall Jeremiah’s prophetic poetry about Judah’s mourning as Babylon brutally destroyed Jerusalem and took away thousands of its people to live in exile hundreds of miles from home. Somehow, in those very dark moments, God’s promise of restoration, God’s gift of hope that the darkness cannot put out the light, mattered even more and shined even more brightly.

We wish each other “Happy New Year.” Even as we do so, we know that wish is unlikely to completely come true on a merely human level. Most of us will reach at least some of the lofty goals we set for ourselves but are likely to look back ruefully on others that fell by the wayside, either due to circumstances or by our own choices. Some of us will end the year healthier and happier than we begin, while others may (despite all we wish for) deal with unexpected grief or financial and relational setbacks when 2025 comes to an end. As much as I wish I could promise you that the New Year will bring all of your wishes to reality, I can’t.

But I can offer you the one sure fire way I’ve found to guarantee that you will not experience 2025 as A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year. That’s to take to heart, and to hold in your heart, the message Matthew West delivered in his song “Happy Day After Christmas.” If you know the song, you know the key line in it is, “Even when Christmas is over the Light of the World is still here.” If you don’t know it (or even if you do), click here to listen to the whole song. And into this year (and every year after it), cherish the truth that “the Light of the World is still here.”

* Adapted from Judith Viorst’s classic children’s book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.