How can we celebrate when our community is reeling from the effects of a global pandemic? And when we have family and church members who are deathly ill or who have died?

This is not the first time God’s people are asking these questions.

We have asked this question from exile: Psalm 137 (ESV) — 1 By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. 3 For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” 4 How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?

And the martyrs have asked that question from the heavenly part of the His Kingdom: Revelation 6:9–10 (ESV) — 10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”

And Mary must have asked that question as she walked in labor to a barn to deliver her “mistake” (Lk.2:7). Her embarrassed family where not there to support her. And her husband was doing her a huge favor by not divorcing her. After all, she was carrying another’s child.

Yet, friend, you know how that story turned out. Look past your circumstances. Choose to focus instead on the warmth and beauty of the celebrated Christ.