Tomorrow is Christmas.

Scratch that. Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. I don’t know what day it is. It’s been a long month. My kids is in bootcamp. She has pneumonia. And she’s not a kid anymore.

I went to look at Christmas lights with friends a couple nights ago. Their four-year-old daughter, June, sat down beside me, her hot chocolate between her mittened hands. “Where’s Landon?” she asked.

“London?”

She nodded.

I said, “She’s a grownup now. She doesn’t live here.”

“But when is she coming back home?”

I said, “I don’t know. She has her own home now.”

I took a sip of my latte. June took a sip of her hot chocolate. We listened to the girl across the way strum her guitar and sing, “Have yourself a merry little Christmas.” Lights in the trees twinkled.

June asked, “Does she have a husband?”

I smiled. “She doesn’t. But she has a cool uniform with a hat.”

June said, “Oh. I’d like to see that.”

So we Googled images of Coast Guard uniforms, and for a moment the material reality of a white twill hat helped us get our heads around London not coming home.

-

My burden is light. But sometimes it feels very heavy. I have friends carrying their own heavy loads. I try to help carry theirs as they try to help me carry mine.

I have a friend with cancer, diagnosed over Thanksgiving break. She’s my age. She’ll spend the whole of the holidays waiting for new years action—surgery, regimens… Going to war.

I have another friend struggling to keep her mind from unravelling. She goes to therapy. She takes the medicine. But past pains rise from graves, and she is haunted.

I mentor a girl who did everything right. She aced the tests and made the grades and still every school said no. And now she’s got to go home and argue with her parents about the future that isn’t and wade into the fog of the future that is.

An old neighbor is newly divorced and feeling very alone. An old friend has two jobs and still can’t pay the bills. A friend of my daughter’s is in love with a girl who will never love him back.

And these are just the people I know. A sampling.

We have not yet mentioned Christians in Nigeria or children in hospital wings or enslaved girls walking the streets of our own cities.

On the way to dinner with friends last night my husband joked, “Nobody act weird.” Grief will do that to you—make you weird. I keep steering conversations toward the burden of poverty and the evils of AI. And look! Now I’ve infected your holiday inbox.

What can I do? There’s something about suffering that opens our eyes to other people’s suffering. Once they’ve been opened, it’s very hard to close them.

-

So I’m suffering. And he’s suffering. She’s suffering. They’re suffering. And maybe you are, too.

I’ve written quite a bit about suffering at Christmas, about how Christmas is the light in the dark holiday. It’s a promise that even though things are bad, Jesus is coming, and what’s to come will be better than what is. Christmas is about hope. Christmas says, You’re not alone here in this pain. Immanuel came, and Immanuel comes. Christmas is about love. There’s joy to it, too. Christmas says, even in the dark there are things to celebrate. And peace—Christmas promises an end to anxiety and strife.

Hope, love, joy, peace. The four candles of advent.

I wonder if there’s one missing.

This year I’m thinking a lot about the “waiting” component of Advent. Naturally.

I read this from Henri Nouwen and can’t stop coming back to it:

“Zechariah, Mary, and Elizabeth were living with a promise that nurtured them, that fed them, and that made them able to stay where they were. And in this way the promise could grow in them and for them […] They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing. That’s the secret. The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun.”

The secret of waiting is faith—faith that something has begun.

-

Your life needs an engine. I tell this to the college students I lead in small group. I tell it to my daughter at home beginning a career.

Lives are powered by things—ambition, desire, envy, revenge, greed, proving our parents wrong, getting the girl. A life is only as big as its engine can handle. Most engines don’t have the horsepower to get a person through the ups and downs, the slings and arrows, the sea of troubles. They have to be rebuilt or exchanged.

The best engines are eternal things, things that have stood the test of time, longings that rage like bonfires. Things like hope and love.

And faith.

Faith is, I’m finding, a most reliable engine. It works in the dark. It works off road. In the rain. It’s what you need to keep going when you do not want to keep going.

I do not want to keep going today, but I cannot turn this engine off.

In Hebrews 10, the author encourages the church to “hold fast” “without wavering,” “for you have need of endurance.” How will they muster that endurance? How will they wait for the second coming of Christ and suffer in the meantime? The same way they did before “when you endured a hard struggle with sufferings”:

“My righteous one shall live by faith… we are not those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.”

The next line is famous: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for…” It’s the first verse of Hebrews 11 (the famed “hall of faith”). The heading for chapter 11 in my Bible is the two word phrase, “By faith.”

The rest of the chapter is a long list of lives empowered by the engine of faith. What were they capable of? Anything.

I know people living by faith. It’s wild to watch them go and go and go—the way they walk as if they see something no one else sees, upheld by an invisible bridge.

My daughter, London, is one of those people. It’s why she joined the Coast Guard at 17, because she was sure God was asking her to. It’s how she’s surviving bootcamp—“He put me here. He’ll get me through.”

I want to be one of those people. I need to be one of those people. There’s no surviving this world without an engine like theirs. I don’t want to be one of the ones who shrinks back and is destroyed. I want to keep going.

-

What does it mean to live by faith?

And what is faith, really? Is it just believing God exists? Is it more than that?

Why is the engine of faith so reliable?

What does engine upkeep look like?

It’s easy to say, “Live by faith” and you’ll have what you need to power through. But I suspect most people don’t know what that means. I bet a lot of people think it means, “Keep your head down and keep going.” It does not.

Because a new year requires new power, and because I am keenly aware of the suffering all around me, I’ve decided to start January with a study of Hebrews chapter 11. You’re invited to join me. We’ll spend 42 days in one single chapter of the Bible asking our God for revelation—Show us what faith is. Show us what faith does. Fill us with faith. Fill us with faith again. Empower us to hold fast without wavering.

I’m a big proponent of reading Scripture slowly, so we’re calling this method of study, “Deep Water. Slow Reading.” The Bible rewards close reading. Sometimes, in our efforts to read across its width, we miss its depth. Let’s not.

So, 42 days in Hebrews 11 starting on January 5th. I’ll send you a reminder closer to time, but for now, consider subscribing to the Deep Water Substack.

-

Christmas isn’t easy. I’m sorry it’s hard, sometimes harder because it’s supposed to be merry and bright. But I do hope you’ll find some consolation in knowing that one night, a long time ago, the sky was unzipped and human beings caught a glimpse of the glory of the Heavens. The angel told the shepherds, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.” And though it would be a long time before the Messiah grew up and died on a cross and rose again and even longer still before He’d come back and reclaim his people and reign with them forever, though the shepherds wouldn’t live to see it all play out, they “[knew] that what they [were] waiting for [was] growing from the ground on which they [were] standing.”

May you wait for what’s already begun with faith. May your good God give it to you—the gift of faith, eyes to see the unseen, hosts of angels proclaiming good news.

Deep Water. Slow Reading.

Reading Scripture together & taking our time

By JL Gerhardt