Browsing on Facebook, I saw a picture of a lovely girl I graduated with from my high school in Michigan. Her husband died last year, leaving her with three young kids to bring up in the world. This keeps me up at night sometimes, this fear. Yet there she was, perhaps not even having passed the first anniversary of his death, and in that photo she was so beautiful; smiling on a plane to Disney World with her parents and her babies around her in the seat, holding a Starbucks cup.

After death, there is still life. Disney and family and coffee and smiling are for the living. She was living, is living. I know it’s maybe ridiculous for me to even be writing this from such an outside perspective, but seeing her face and the faces of her children gave me great hope – that even when the worst has happened, there are still gifts. Hope. Life.

And so today, there is bright hope because:

1. This great big world has not stopped spinning.

2. The sky remains firmly overhead.

3. The mountains have not fallen into the sea, at least not yet today.

4. Trees and ground and garden are bursting with life and color here in the States, and it isn’t because a politician signed a paper and said they could.

5. It’s because God moves through nature and souls like a whisper on water and he cannot be held back. It’s upside down and it doesn’t make sense and it goes against all that seems normal and sane. But life shoots up straight out of death and no one can make it stop.

What is your bright hope today?

He said he wanted to plant a tree in the center of our cul-de-sac. He talked about it for weeks, stared into the nothing with only his imagination to advise him. But then one day, he pulled into the cozy circle where we do life with a small tree in the back of a pick up truck. When my brother-in-law gets an idea, there is rarely much time before action.

He worked hard to dig a hole, not even to his knees if he stood straight in it. Then he hoisted that small tree onto his shoulder and dropped it strong into that hole in the ground. We all watered, watched, wished for it to grow.

We spread blankets around her skinny trunk in the heat of that first summer, wishing she were big enough to offer leafy arms for shade and relief. She watched hot days roll by as kids played around her – lemonade stands, Barbies in the grass, not-quite-cartwheels turning her upside down.

My father-in-law was still living that summer, and even though he didn’t easily say the deeper things out loud, he seemed pleased that his son chose to plant a tree. He’d mosey slow through the yard, across the street, and with fingers touching around her small trunk, he’d say, “Take a picture with it every year at the same time. You won’t believe how fast it grows.”

She has blush white buds now, four years later. And those flowers will turn to leaves in no time, leaves that will hold on ’til October, leaves that promise picnics. Shade. Life. I think that’s why he planted it, why anyone would ever plant anything that will last. We look at that young tree and know it will long out-live us. But not before it bears witness to our lives, our living.

It will watch as the brothers stand near and remember, as the girls play sing-song hand-clap games, as the fathers play ball with their sons and the sisters-in-law cross lawns to trade sorrows and stories of their daughters driving off with their friends. It will watch, long into the night as the neighbors lay sleeping and the dogs bark at nothing and the families live our family lives one day at a time. That tree will grow silently and watch our lives spin by. And the seasons will move around her, shape her, change her.

She will surrender her leaves again, but she will still stand tall. And after that, the blushing buds that burst forth green will come whether or not we’re here to see it.

She is a gift because she reminds us of our lives past and our lives to come. She reminds us that God is and that he will be.

She reminds us that we are small.

And that is how it should be.

“In opting to celebrate His birthday in Bethlehem in such low-key fashion, Jesus revealed himself free from public opinion, from fear of what others might say or think. Jesus is the incarnation of the Father’s freedom. Paradoxically, while the freedom of Jesus is contagious for some, in others it arouses defensiveness. They have set their faces against freedom, against surprise, against novelty.”

Brennan Manning, Lion and Lamb

Maybe it’s why we cheer for the underdog, why we are attracted to humility in others, why we long for simplicity in the midst of this crowded, competitive world. It’s because love came down as an unlikely hero — small, scrawny, helpless, needy. And in coming that way, he declared freedom from the world’s expectations before he could even open his eyes. How can a King be a baby? How can God be a man and God?

Maybe all of life is really about coming back to the stable, learning to believe that because God came as a baby, then the last ones are first, the weak ones are strong, and all of heaven hangs upside down. May we set our face toward the freedom that comes from living like it’s true. May we believe with our lives that all of these things we so desperately seek – worth, attention, love, belonging – are found in Him. And He has come, and we are free.

Merry Christmas, friends. Repeat the sounding joy.