Grateful In The Tension

Grateful In The Tension

Well, friends, we are a week past Thanksgiving. This means we are well into “the holidays.” This season is supposed to bring joy, laughter, food and merriment. The holidays are the best time of the year, but they can also bring out the worst in us, can’t they?

Tensions run high with everything there is to do—shop, bake, attend parties, throw parties. Tensions can also run high as we spend more time than usual with our families. Our families may include relatives we can typically hold at arm’s length, only checking in here and there via social media or a text message. Then during the holidays, we are suddenly face to face with them, sharing a meal with them, talking with them. Inevitably, old stories are told, and old wounds may be opened. Suddenly you find yourself retreating to a room to just look at your phone and read blog posts, like this one.

What if, instead of trying to escape the tension of the holidays, you were grateful for it? Yes, you read that right: be grateful for the tension.

Although we crave it, our lives were never meant to be tension-free. In fact, we were guaranteed a tension-full life. Jesus made a promise to his disciples, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). He didn’t say if you have trouble; he said you will have trouble. Why is this? Paul talks about it in Romans: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:22-23).

This world is fallen and broken. It is in need of restoration. This is why our lives and relationships often experience brokenness. This is why the holidays are rarely the picture of perfection, though our greeting cards and social media posts might suggest otherwise.

It might sound far-fetched or dramatic to apply a verse like John 16:33 to something like family tension during this season. After all, the context of this passage is Jesus’ telling the disciples that they will suffer persecution for their faith. But I feel like the big-picture message Jesus gave here was that we are going to feel uncomfortable in life, and when we do, that doesn’t mean we should run away from our circumstances. It doesn’t mean we’ve done something wrong, or that we’ve chosen the wrong path. It simply means that his promise is being fulfilled. We are going to have trouble.

It’s this promise that points us immediately to the next promise Jesus makes in John 16:33—“But take heart! I have overcome the world.” The tension points us to Christ. It points us to the time that we are eagerly awaiting, as Paul said, when all will be redeemed. Until then, we wait. Until then, we sit in the tension as parts of us and this earth are being restored and parts are left in need of restoration.

This is why we can be grateful for whatever tension the holidays may bring, because they point us to Christ. When everyone is most concerned and consumed with what’s happening in the here and now, Christ followers are looking upward and forward, toward Christ and the future glory he will bring. The future restoration. Without tension and trouble and trials, we wouldn’t be reminded of the healing nature of Christ our Lord.

So this season, instead of running from the tension, go sit in it. Be grateful for it. This world is broken and so are our relationships, but Jesus is with us in them and he is actively working to make all things new.

To read more about Jesus’ power to heal and restore even the most broken among us, we encourage you to work through our studies on the Book of Romans.