Another Christmas card. Another Christmas letter. Another Christmas photo of a fit dad and a pretty mom and their beautiful stairstep children – 11, 15, and 19—all wearing Santa hats.

Even the dog.

This one is from her sister. The letter provides a brief overview of their accomplishments and vacations and what a wonderful life they have and how they do hope every recipient of their Christmas wishes has a merry one. And a Happy New Year, too!

She hangs the card on the red string that spans her living room. Secures it there with a merry clip in a merry lineup with the others. The tree in the corner bears a collection of ornaments dating back fifty-two years now. There’s the shiny pink sphere announcing Baby’s First Christmas in glittery script. She pushes it gently with one finger and watches it sway amongst the bells, angels, and reindeer telling the story of her childhood Christmases.

Some do, anyway. The oldest ones. The ones that point her heart back to the family Christmas letters Mom wrote back when she was the baby who merited that pink glittery globe. The letters where she herself was the middle stairstep child in a Santa hat. Mom’s gentle and happy words of her big brother Hal’s achievement award and that funny story about little sister Macey’s clever tooth fairy remark. All those holly-framed letters informing the aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and friends of achievements that included, among other things, her own long ago debut in the community center’s Christmas stage play—embarrassingly cast as a tap-dancing elf.

She stands by her store-bought plastic tree laden with faded, beautiful, tacky, fashionable and ugly ornaments and unconsciously hums “Silent Night.”

Memory graces her with a whiff of Douglas fir, the crunch and crystalline chill of new snow, the warm of spiced cider in an eager young belly and the rumble of Grandpa’s jolly laughter on Christmas morning. She’s collected such memories as her mother collected and sorted the ornaments of her childhood and bestowed each handpicked collection upon her brother and sister and herself. A wedding gift collection for the decking of their first away-from-home Christmas trees. Cheerful decorations to stand in the background of their own Santa-hatted stairstep families’ Christmas photos.

Only it hasn’t turned out that way. Not exactly.

Her brother’s box of ornaments was lost early on in one of many relocations. His Christmas photos have featured, over time, two wives and one child. But a dog (or two or three) and the Santa hats could ever be counted on to make an appearance.

Her little sister, clever girl, has managed the whole picture. Adoring husband and children lined up, boy, girl, girl, with good old Rover at their feet. Has managed it all. Only those closest to Macey know the ache that doesn’t show in this year’s picture. The part that didn’t make the cut for her Christmas letter news.

As for her, Christmas wife and mother stories are intermingled on her tree. The boys kindergarten masterpieces interspersed between the old-fashioned silver and gold balls, the handblown glass angel sharing space with shepherds, wisemen, and stars of diverse media.

She has, over 28 years of marriage, accumulated her own stack of Christmas letters, cards and photos – sans hats and sans dogs, neither of which were tolerable to her husband’s sensibilities. But the Christmas smiles are in every photo, always brightest on whichever small boy is straddling his daddy’s shoulders, until, of course, he grew too big for that special seat.

Four boys for her. No girls.

A family of boys made for jolly, rambunctious Christmas hunts for the perfect tree, but she quickly gave up on duplicating her cherished Christmas-music-infused family decorating days of yore.

The boys, once old enough not to damage Christmas treasures, lost interest in all but the traditional clam chowder and breadsticks dinner. Decking the halls became a solo affair. But that, with the glad surprise of schoolboys arriving home to behold an indoor winter wonderland, had charms of its own.

Now, on this third empty-nest Christmas, she has piles of unwrapped presents in the guest room. She and her husband, champion gift wrapper that he is, will take care of that tonight, sustained by crockpot chili and cornbread and the annual showing of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Their boys are doing well. Three of them married to lovely daughters-in-law who have supplied seven beautiful grandchildren. Her youngest son all set to pop the question to the sweet girl who has made a guest appearance in their family Christmas photos for two years now.

So why, she wonders, this sadness over Christmas? Why this ache over every family gathering? Over—if she is wholly honest—every thought of her children and, to a lesser degree, every thought of her parents and siblings and the grandparents who no longer come to the door on Christmas mornings to the tune of Grandpa’s jolly laugh.

These people are not hers in the way they used to be. They are all no more than visitors in each other’s lives now.

When she left her home to start another with her husband, the hint of loss was mostly covered by the excitement of venturing out. Yet it lingers still, a nostalgic melancholy that comes and goes with the change of seasons. A longing for something unattainable, for she cannot be the child in the picture and the wife and mother, too. It shames her, this discontent that—however much laughter and music and hugs family visits contain—has stubbornly lodged in her heart since her oldest married and moved out.

***

On this second Sunday of December, theirs may be the only pastor in the world preaching a sermon on Exodus. This passage about gathering materials and implementing instructions for the building of the traveling tabernacle can’t have much, if anything, to do with the original Christmas story. Or, for that matter, with her own personal Christmas story and this longing she can’t seem to shake.

She’s sandwiched between her husband and sister in the church they’ve attended all their lives. Dad and Mom one pew ahead of them, two of her sister’s three children sitting between Macey and her husband, Lance. Their oldest is away at college, having informed them at the Christmas photo shoot, that he won’t be back for the festivities this year as he’s been invited on a ski trip in Switzerland. Big brother Hal is living out of state and may or may not be attending church today with wife number two. They go on special occasions. December might qualify.

A late night of wrapping presents has her fighting to stay focused on the pastor’s revelation of the redemption story hidden in Exodus 35 and 36. Who knew? The journey through Exodus has been filled with such surprises. She sneaks a few chocolate covered espresso beans from her purse, stored there for sleepy Sundays.

The pastor is all over the Bible this week. He takes them back to Genesis, showing how the Garden of Eden was a type of temple or tabernacle, a broken paradise pointing to an unbreakable one to come. He takes them forward to John and Acts and 1 Corinthians and Ephesians. Then on to Revelation’s picture of the fulfilment of the promise of the Garden and the desert tabernacle and the Jerusalem temple. All these threads woven throughout the metanarrative of scripture tangle into her aching heart as he delivers the last point of application and thereby shines a light on the mystery of her discontent.

***

She stands to sing the final song. Stands in this room where she knows others carry far more reason to ache than she. Here in this sanctuary she knows of seven families who will have empty spots at their tables for the first time—three deaths, one divorce, one freshly-discovered infidelity, one estrangement and one who conveniently said yes to a Swiss ski trip on this first Christmas since he confessed he no longer believes in the God this season is meant to celebrate. Empty places come for all kinds of reasons. Even to families with the most enviable of Christmas letters and photos.

She takes Macey’s hand as the congregation stands and sings, “You have been our dwelling place, O everlasting God.” She is struck by these words, so reflective of the sermon’s message of the whole church of God, the people of God, being created to dwell—to tabernacle—with God.

She thinks of their first parents, dwelling naked and unashamed in the Garden of Eden. Of God later bringing their enslaved children out to freedom in the desert, instructing them on the building of a tabernacle, setting them apart as a new nation with God Himself dwelling among them. She thinks of God become flesh to dwell among us. His Spirit dwelling within us now.

And yet, we ache.

Her own ache expands with the swell of the chorus and tears clog her voice. She swallows hard, sings the words in bits, “Before the sun comes up… before the day has passed us by… before our hearts forget…” driving that sermon application from head to heart.

This is not the relief she had imagined. That the ache, the longing is not so much a thing to be resolved. Not here anyway. Not now. That it’s a good thing, this longing for the beauty and union of family dwelling together. She hadn’t suspected that her ache over the loss of intimacy, even that brought about by the healthy separations of leaving and cleaving, could be the echo of a deeper longing. The one the pastor delivered so clearly in the final application point of the sermon.

We, who are in Christ have been called to long for our eternal dwelling with God.

The ache reminds us, though the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, though we have the indwelling Spirit even now, the full intimacy of consummation is yet to come.

The gospel in Genesis and Exodus and John are now tied together in her mind with the gospel in Revelation. Words of Revelation mingle with her longing for unbroken intimacy in her family—past, present, and future.

He will dwell with them…

God Himself will be with them…

He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore…

and the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light…

It is right that God’s people should long for this. She feels the longing as a physical thing. An ache that is also a joy. A hope most surely to be fulfilled. She lets herself feel it here in the unity of Sunday worship, voicing with her brothers and sisters the last longing words of the closing song, “Satisfy us with Your love.”