Many families struggle with strained relationships, broken hearts and old wounds at Christmas time. However, there are solutions that emerge when we’re willing to be patient, meek, forgiving, and willing to ‘see’ the true men and women of God’s creating in our family members.
Read how Sabrina Stillwell found the way to healing a family fracture . . .
She writes, “Sometimes it seems that Christmas is less about celebrating the “advent and nativity of our Lord,” and more about the expectations of happy family gatherings, festive activities, and abundant gift-giving. These are all lovely, but what if Christmas hopes are not fulfilled? What if a family is fractured by disagreements, divorce, illness, or death? Maybe one is holding on to hurts and misunderstandings or just deeply disappointed in another.
Can God’s love, revealed in the advent of Christ Jesus, heal the brokenhearted and bring peace to difficult situations, especially at this time of year? Indeed it can—if we’re ready to gain a spiritual perspective of Christmas.
Christmas is the revealing and celebrating of a higher view of man’s relation to God. Jesus came along and showed us more clearly that God is a loving Father, and that man—all of us—are the beloved sons and daughters of God. Through the advent of Jesus, who embodied Christ, the true idea of God and the true nature of man as God’s spiritual image and likeness became apparent.
During his ministry, Jesus presented a revolutionary idea about our relationships with one another. One day, while he was preaching to a crowd, someone told him that his mother and brothers wanted to speak with him. He replied by stretching his hand toward his disciples and saying, “Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Matthew 12:49, 50).”
This response puzzled Sabrina. She questioned, “Was Jesus disregarding his human family? As I prayed about this,” she writes, “it came to me that the Master wasn’t disregarding these important relationships. Rather, he was turning his followers to a higher sense of family as not connected by blood or marriage, but by God, divine Love.”
Read on in the Christian Science Journal to discover how Sabrina Stillwell dealt with some difficult Christmases when she and her husband weren’t allowed to see some of their grandchildren, and what comforted them and eventually changed the entire situation.
Christian Science Society, Sunshine Coast 