The Trouble With Christmas

"The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
a light has dawned."
Isaiah 9:2

Did you know that more people suffer from depression, anxiety, and that there are more suicides during December that at any other time of the year?
Depression, oppression that is so heavy, like a thick cloud, that can envelope and attack a person, and none of us is beyond this dangerous condition. Instead of being able to focus on the birth of Jesus, our Liberator, Redeemer, and Savior, their hearts are weighed down with problems, both real and perceived. In depression every challenge seems insurmountable, trying to hold us as captives, but when we fix our eyes on Jesus, taking vain and empty imaginations captive, we realize the truth: NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH JESUS WALKING SIDE BY SIDE WITH US.
When we listen to the wrong voice, that lying voice that can turn our gaze off of Jesus, and onto ourselves, molehills become mountains, but when we focus on the Voice of the Beloved, mountains are reduced to molehills, every adversarial issue diminishes as we weigh it against the glory that awaits us.
"Hope deferred makes the heart sick", and "Anxiety in the heart of man weighs him down".
We serve a Lord and Savior who never lies, and never leaves us or forsakes us, but we have to stay under His wings, abiding in Him, feast on His Word, dwelling with Him and tending relationships with our brothers and sisters who have common temptations, fears, anxieties.
We have a God who takes bad things, trials, pain, and suffering, and turns it all around, He makes everything beautiful just in time.
Our Father takes the flames of hell and uses them to purify and refine our broken hearts, the ashes and our tears mixing together to make the mortar that God uses as He renews and recreates-putting the shattered pieces back together...stronger...much more beautiful than what existed before.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
John 1:1-4