Christmas Song Blog Day 22 – Almost There

Today we travel.

If all goes well, 11 hours of driving will carry us over roughly 600 miles of middle America to our family home. Despite the modern conveniences, at times it still feels like a journey of Biblical proportions. And when we arrive there will be room at the inn, but not necessarily peace. We will feel relief and joy, but our relationship with our destination, the town and the people who fill it, is complex (see my Darlington Romances for more on this). There will be more stress than usual this year due to the current political climate. And yet there will also be Christmas, with family and love and church filled with golden light. Today’s song blog is a reminder that we are heading toward something worth celebrating, and we are almost there. It will help me keep moving forward amid all the reasons I have not to.

But more than that, it reminds me that beyond this trip, beyond my own life and my own limited view, the angels can still see redemption’s plan still unfolding.

Lonely road, a willing heart, I pray for strength to do my part.

I want so badly to be a part of the solution, of the healing, of the redemption. I am trying to trust the Father to provide bread of heaven, prophesied, but it doesn’t feel like we’re almost there. It feels like there’s so much to be done and miles to go before we sleep.  I feel helpless and frail and afraid of what comes next. I don’t know what that is. I don’t know where we go from there, but Christmas is a reminder that no matter what we are to encounter, we do not have to do it alone. Christmas is the answered prayer, Emmanuel.  The plan is still unfolding. The prayer is still being answered.

Emmanuel. God with us.

God with us, as we travel this holiday and as we travel the long, winding road as a nation, as a world. And in that sense, the sense that Christmas has the power to bring hope and peace and renewed strength to face the journey ahead. We are almost there.