Advent With Christina Grimmie

It’s December 10, 2022—and I am remembering Christina Grimmie after six-and-a-half years. It’s hard to believe so much time has passed. Three of my “kids” are now older than Christina was on the final day of her earthly life. But her music has remained as one of many ways in which she is a bright light in these days of preparation for Christmas, and in the joy of the Christmas season. I wrote about her YouTube Christmas music five years ago on this blog (HERE) and I still love these songs, although one of the internal links is no longer active on that post. Since then, compilations of her Christmas material have been posted on YouTube.

Christina’s life reached its fulfillment while she was still young (and, by any measure, it was an unusually full and joyful life). But our time-in-this-world continues to move and change; we continue to journey, following the “signs” of our days, months, years (for some of us, many years) and longing to find where they are leading. The road passes through obscure places, but there are also lights, like stars in the night sky, that guide us along the way, and remind us that what we seek—what we are awaiting—is not a fantasy of our own making, but the fulfillment of a promise.

We especially need lights to break through the long nights of this Advent 2022. So often, violence seems to be putting an end to fragile human aspirations, smashing them, extinguishing them, suffocating them. We need to remember that our hope is in the One who came to dwell with those who suffer violence—the One whose Love is greater than all the powers of this world.

Christina Grimmie’s 2014 rendition of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” helps us to remember. Watch and listen as her inimitable voice brings a touch of “soul” to to this traditional Advent hymn: