If you seek me, you will find me.
God spoke those words through the prophet Jeremiah, to a people who had needed to hear that promise desperately.
I’m holding those words close this Christmas. A loved one is very, very sick and my heart hurts. There’s a shadow over Christmas and I feel both sorrow and gratitude. Sorrow over the very real circumstances. Gratitude that when Jesus spoke these words, He meant them.
Not just for me, but for my loved one.
And for you too.
One joy stealer is this: Believing that sorrow and gratitude and joy is mutually exclusive. If you have one, you can’t have the others.
Not true.
The other day I was on the couch reading. I was alone. I felt a tear slide down my cheek, and then another. For the next hour, I grieved what I could not change. I grieved for what is to come. I grieved for my loved one. I grieved for this hard, hard season for which they did not ask.
When people ask, “How are you?” I simply say. “I don’t know.” Because I don’t.
But what I do know is that if I seek Him, I will find Him. In my sorrow. In those moments of sheer gratitude. In those tears. In the laughter as I sit with this loved one and we tell old stories.
And that same promise is for you too.
Today’s JoyKeeper Truth: If you seek Him, you will find Him right where you are
As you do, remember that sorrow and joy and gratitude can exist in the same human, and it’s healing work.
As you go into Christmas:
- Make room for your sorrow
- Find those moments of gratitude and express them
- Never, ever believe that joy and sorrow cannot exist within the same moment, or in the same season, for they can and they do
- Seek Him for you will find Him — in all of these places
