I don’t feel merry this year.
	As I was visiting with a few friends this morning, several of them said they feel the same way. We’re not decking the halls as much as we usually do. We agreed that there has been so much bad news for so long that it feels strange to try to drum up “merry” feelings. My sense is that we feel a deep dissonance between the festivities of the season and the reality of the suffering in the world around us. 
	And we haven’t been laid off or deported. 
	Our present funk is not bad news, actually. It is good to know that we feel empathy for people who are struggling or in real danger. We are identifying with our fellow humans, so we shouldn’t feel merry when they are suffering. 
	The danger of this predicament is to become cynical or lost in despair. To throw up our hands, helpless to make a difference. But we don’t want to go in the opposite direction, sticking our heads in the sand, actively ignoring the needs of our neighbors while blithely buying more stuff and wearing ourselves out with holiday overload.
	There is another way: the way of hope.
	Hope is the stance of Advent, when we recognize our need for rescue and healing, and we lean forward into the One who has the answers. Not the solutions necessarily, at least not right away. But we pull back from the present moment to see the bigger picture.
	Therein lies our hope. While we do not want to ignore the reality of people’s suffering, we need to recognize that reality also includes God who loves us all, and is with us in the midst of all of it. God who has brought people out of darkness and into the light many times throughout history, and will do it again.
	When Joseph was told to take Mary as his wife and to act as the father to the Christ child, he was told that the child would actually be God in human skin: “Emmanu-el,” the with-us God. Jesus would be—is—fully aware of the challenges of being a homo sapien living in a community of people who are broken and sometimes confused, sometimes violent, sporadically happy, but always in need of love. He knows how much we need healing because he felt it himself. 
	This is the one who invites us to live his way, the way of love and mercy.  
	As I was meditating today, I pictured Jesus by my side as we viewed scenes of human suffering and evil together. Not only was he feeling their pain, he was also feeling my deep sadness as I observed my fellow suffering humans. There was a sense of all of us being one together, experiencing the reality of what it means to be humans in pain. But I also felt his love enveloping us all.
	Then I sensed Jesus inviting me to come to this viewing room with him often, where we can sit together and consider those who need our love. I can let him enliven my imagination with ways to help, and talk together about small ways of showing love every day. 
	This room has one candle in it right now, during the first week of Advent. It will gain a new candle each week, but the flashiness and noise of the commercial Christmas will remain in another room. I can function there, but I need to come back here daily. I can bring the peace of his presence back with me to the other place. 
	Because this is the room not of merriment, but of hope. That is how I can reframe this month and resolve the dissonance that has been disturbing my inner peace. Instead of seeking to be merry, I can be hopeful, because Jesus is with me and everyone else. He is love, and he will keep showing me how to love—and thus offer hope—to the people I encounter. 
	Hopeful, if not merry. That works for me.