Where There Are Empty Chairs : Grief and the Holidays

This morning I sit here at the foot of a decorated and lit up Christmas tree. It’s quiet and my kids are still sleeping. Like many early mornings, I linger here thinking, as my eyes wander through the empty and quiet room. I smile at how the lights on the tree brighten up our little home. Then, my eyes find the empty chair that is directly in front of me.

This chair tells a story. In the quietness, I think about what is missing beyond the joyful sights and sounds that this season brings…

Where there are empty chairs

Now sits silence-

A face that you don’t see

A hand that you can’t hold

A laugh that you no longer hear.

Still (even now) that empty chair holds a memory that stays seated. An opposite to what is seen, felt and heard. There is something that reminds me to smile as the tears fill up my eyes and the mind loses it’s way. Yet, those empty chairs mean something, because without them we wouldn’t know the love we knew and the capacity to which we could feel. And we can be comforted in the understanding that those chairs held someone special at one time.

That’s why ‘Immanuel’ always gives such a powerful yet peaceful impact. Jesus came to be God with us. He is Immanuel. Looking back and reflecting on his birth, we do not focus on an empty stable nor do we see the lowliness or desolation it must have been like. We see the place where a king and a savior was born. We see angels rejoicing, shepherds running, kings bowing to their knees in worship. And, we are reminded that through an empty stable, an empty cross, and an empty tomb, that emptiness does not mean nothing is there. It means that something was, and that there was someone there who created life and something so amazing and life changing. Immanuel…God is still with us and the hope he brought continues to give us hope unending into our present days and into the future. So, where there are empty chairs, there is also love…so much love. May we honor that love this season and let the reminders of Jesus’ birth bring us hope and joy in the moments of grief.