The Christmas season is bittersweet.
Perhaps, like me, you are missing someone you love (I miss my mom who passed earlier this year) or you’re grieving your Mom or a loved one this Christmas.
Maybe, you resonate if you’re facing a crisis, (health, job, retirement, you name it), or it’s hard to look around, despairingly over all that’s wrong in the world.
Amid these difficulties, Christmas, which should be a time of joy and celebration, can seem almost like a contradiction.
I miss my mom. A lot. I remember the day 20 years ago when she prayed, asking God to save her, to forgive her sins, and thanking Jesus for giving His life to save her. I saw so much joy in Mom’s face that day. I didn’t know until I found her journal a few months ago that she wrote down that prayer.
She wrote, “Dear Father, please forgive my sins. . . . help me to grow stronger in my faith in you and in your Son Jesus Christ . . . Lord, thank you for my daughter, who has led me on the right path . . .”
But as the years passed, Mom had a hard time staying close to God. She and I lived 3,000 apart and no one around her shared her faith. At times, I think she felt alone. It’s hard to grow in faith in isolation. Throughout history, God always encouraged His people to come together and celebrate His love, protection, and goodness.
If we live our lives apart from God, we will inevitably become self-focused and either sad, angry, or bitter when we look at life and the world around us. But when we focus our lives on God, He promises to fill our hearts with joy, peace, and love and gives us a new perspective on a world that is drowning in darkness.
In fact, this is why Jesus came into the world. The Bible says that every one of us has “sinned and falls short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Sin is simply doing things that break God’s heart. All of us have made selfish choices that hurt ourselves and others – and because those choices are not God’s best for us, all of us “fall short.” It is our sin that separates us from God – that’s why we don’t have peace.
Hope For When You’re Grieving Your Mom This Christmas
But the prophet Isaiah told us that one day a Savior would be born: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6).
Prince of Peace. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? It might seem impossible, but the apostle Paul wrote to Christians, saying, “Since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.”
We cannot make ourselves right with God through our good deeds or our ancestry or by trying harder to be a nice person. The Bible says that all of us fall short. There is only one way to God. A plan that God laid out before the beginning of time: to send His Son into the world to take our sins upon Himself. And God promises that everyone who believes in Him will be saved (Romans 10:9, 13). In 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, it says that “Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he rose from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said.”
Hope For Grieving Your Mom Christmas Bible Verse
In the gospel of John, Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16-17)
Death was not part of God’s design in the beginning, but human rebellion against God polluted our world with sin and that’s why we have death and pain and sorrow.
But this is only temporary. We can find hope for grief. The prophet Isaiah said that one day God “will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces.” (Isaiah 25:8)
A Christmas Message For A Grieving Family
Although I’m grieving my Mom this Christmas, I have hope to see my mom again because death is not the end. The Bible says in Romans chapters 10:9 and 13, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. . . For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’”
In fact, this is the central theme of my new Bible study, RAHAB: Rediscovering the God Who Saves Me. I wrote the last chapter just weeks after Mom passed away. The book is dedicated to her memory.
Christmas might be bittersweet this year. But God promises that this life is not all there is. Just as my mom’s story didn’t end when she passed from this life into the next, the story of Jesus didn’t end when He was born on Christmas Day as a baby. He grew up, lived a perfect, sinless life, died on the Cross, and then three days later, was raised to life again. This is the gift that we celebrate at Christmas. This is the hope we cling to when life doesn’t go the way we planned. This is the message the world needs to hear.
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
May you experience the true Prince of Peace this Christmas.
Shadia is a passionate Bible teacher, award-winning author, and speaker who has a heart for seeing lives transformed by the power of God’s Word. She holds a master’s in biblical and theological studies from Western Seminary and is the author of several books and Bible studies, including HAGAR, TAMAR, LEGION, Worthy of Love, and her newest study, RAHAB: Rediscovering the God Who Saves Me!
