When the Seat is Empty
Holidays hurt for some people, especially the big three for a Christian, which are Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. As we grow older, more and more family and friends have passed, more seats are empty and more loneliness creeps in. Years rapidly pass and then it’s just one or two of you left. Christmas becomes more about memories than presence, and presents are few if any. As Christians we know the best gift has already been given to us. “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” 2 Corinthians 9:15. The indescribable gift is the Son of God that offers us eternal salvation. And we know that we are never alone. Jesus promised to never leave us Christians. “…I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5. But we miss the physical presence of our departed family and friends. This old joke about a little boy illustrates how we feel when we get older, and when we have more people in heaven than we do on earth. A little boy reached that terrifying time of day when his mother would turn out the lights in his room and leave him for the night. Afraid of the dark and of being by himself he cried out for his mother to stay. Being a woman of faith, she reassured her son that God would be with him through the night. 'But, Mama,' he cried, 'I need God with skin on!’ We realize we have more friends on Facebook than we do in real life and more friends in a foreign country than we do in our neighborhood. The need for physical touch and the ministry of presence becomes a greater need during the holidays because, aren’t all families supposed to gather and celebrate in person? That is hard to do when the family is just you or maybe just a few. I was praying about this in church on Christmas Eve and the thought came to me that if all of my family is saved, why can’t I just deal with this for the next twenty to thirty years because when we get to heaven, we get the eternal presence of our loved ones forever! So you press on.

When the Prodigal Hasn’t Come Home.
Your raised your child to love God more than anything, but she learned to love the world more than she loved God. She gradually began to love her addiction more than she loved herself and now she is lost in world of homelessness, drugs, and God knows what else. The holiday celebration that should be filled with love, laughter and joy has been replaced with an intense prayer that she is alive and well. Memories become regret and nostalgic tokens of the past scream failure, birthing a desperate need to fix the situation, but you can’t. You see the posts and pictures of other people’s family gatherings, seemingly having it all together, and your heart and emotions sink deeper in depression and despair with envy of the Norman Rockwell life that escaped your family long ago. Your reality is much different. The empty seat is covered in prayer and even fasting for a child to return to her senses and trade the life of addiction for a normal life. And you press on.

When Values Have Evolved
Your son grew up in church and conservative Christian values were instilled in him. Then he left home and his mind was “opened.” The cultural elites shifted his thoughts from his pastor and parents being people that walked with God, to being closed minded people that were stuck in the past. The “open mind” allowed the world to extract the values your son had grown up with and replace them with what you thought must have come from an alien force. Slowly your son began accepting a culture that was not your own and should have never been his. He knew better, but now he had become “educated.” The narrative he now lives in taught him that his parents and pastors were cultural antiquities. God had evolved into an image your son created for himself, contrary to the biblical values he grew up with. He brought home his partner, that eventually became his husband. You spent the visit in conflict with your mind and your present reality. We want to see our families during the holidays-the pastors, the prodigals, the good ones, the not so good ones, and even the ones that have evolved into a different world view, but we are set and grounded in our Christian values that kept us sane through the wars, crises, and craziness of a decaying world. We aren’t going to change because members of our family have changed and adopted alternative lifestyles. We want to see you during the holidays, we just don’t want you pushing an agenda because we are not going to change. We still love you, but we are not going to call your new lifestyle normal. We will hold to our biblical understanding of love and marriage, like the early Christian martyrs held their faith even to the point of execution. And we will never stop loving you, no matter how different we have become, or how perplexed we are in your presence. So, we press on.

When Your Healing Hasn’t Come
You have gone to the doctor, then several more doctors, then tried several medicines, treatments, and therapies. And you are still not healed. You have gone to the altar, Baptist, and Pentecostal, just in case one was closer to God than the other, knowing both believe in healing, but realizing one more so than the other. And you are still not healed. You have tried more home remedies, vitamins, and diets than you have seen advertisements for. And you are still not healed. The devil wants you to doubt God’s power because of this, but you know we live in a fallen world and bad things happen to good people. You know your body is only a temporary house and temporary houses decay, not matter how well maintained. As a Christian, you long for heaven, but realize God must have left you here for a reason, so you soldier on. Many around you are unaware of the pain you experience just to walk through the grocery store. With all your might, you make sure your pain doesn’t define you, but the ones closest to you, with their compassionate care, remind you that it can. Your pain becomes your testimony. A testimony of the sufficient grace of the Savior who suffered so you could be saved, so you press on, knowing one day you will stand in His presence and be fully healed. Until then, you endure. You know that it will one day be amazing to live in a new body with a new mind, and no pain. And you press on.

I have either personally experienced or counseled church members in the previous scenarios during my 42 years of ministry. These are just a few of the family situations that create chaos and pain, especially during holidays. In John 16:33 Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." There will be problems, but we have hope in Jesus Christ.

Dr. Keith Pierce, Associational Missions Strategist
Clinton Baptist Association