Is Christmas taking or giving?

My five-year-old daughter just started playing basketball. Lucky for my husband and me, we get to be the coaches. Last night was our first ever game to coach or have a child play, and let me just tell ya, it was INTENSE. The scrappiness that came out of these little girls was shocking. We had a couple of girls that were just in complete and total shock by the amount of aggression from the other team. So many hands in their faces and people screaming from the benches. My mama bear had to fight to not come on to the court when one girl stuck her tongue out at my child and stole the ball from her. I mean, come on! Needless to say, there was a lot of giving and taking going on. Sounds like life, huh?!

It feels like we're all just on a court trying to get the ball in the basket and we've got tongues sticking out at us, elbows swinging, and things being taken away from us. The obstacles of life can be too much at times, (especially for all my enneagram 9's out there like me). Just give me my own court with maybe a good friend or two around to assist with a shot here and there.

Sadly that's not the bubble we get to live in.

We get some money. Then the heating and air unit breaks and there goes your savings.

We get our sweet, but challenging, kiddos raised to school-age. Then a freak virus hits and they're right back at home, learning from a screen, while you're trying to hold down a job.

We get a job and get let go.

We get close to people and they walk away, move, drift apart, or pass away.

Any Seinfeld fans feel me when I just want to yell "SERENITY NOW!"

The whole giving and taking process can be maddening and can make me feel just as in shock as my sweet little basketball player last night with crocodile tears running down her face.

Do you think that's how Mary felt? Do you think as Jesus was being brutally taken away from her on the cross, she remembered when he was first given to her. Do you think she remembered the feeling of her baby boy being placed in her arms for the first time?

I know Christmas is a time to focus on the joy of his birth, but I can't help but also think of his death.

When I read about Mary and Joseph wrapping their new baby Jesus in swaddling cloths, I'm reminded of another Joseph that would later wrap Jesus' lifeless body in linen cloths.

I think of the baby Jesus laid most likely in a stone trough and then the lifeless Jesus laid in a stone tomb.

I think of Job 1:21: "Naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I will depart. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away."

Sometimes I get fixated on the taking away and get stuck in the "God, WHY!?".

Then I find hope because Jesus' story doesn't end with the taking away.

Remember when an angel came to a frightened Mary, the mother of Jesus, telling her she would give birth to a Savior?

Thirty-three years later an angel came again to another frightened Mary, this time, announcing that Jesus had risen.

See? The story of Jesus' birth doesn't just foreshadow his death, it also points towards his resurrection!

And that's the nature of God. His end goal is always focused on new life.

Similarly, Job 1:21 doesn't end with the taking away.

It says "The Lord gives and takes away BUT THE NAME OF THE LORD SHALL BE PRAISED."

We can praise even after something is taken away because from defeat God brings victory.

Christmas is the beginning of the greatest redemption story of all time. 

And for that reason, we can hope.

God didn't leave Jesus in the grave, and He won't leave us either.

Alisa Keeton, founder of Revelation Wellness, often says "If it isn't good, it isn't the end."

If you're in a "take away" season, please know it's not the end.

Let Romans 8:28 speak over you:

If your family gatherings have all been taken away this Christmas, God can still bring good from it.

If your job has been taken away, He can redeem the situation.

If you've lost a loved one, He can shine light where darkness seems permanent.

If you have nothing left, even hope, God brought the dead to life, and that same power can do that in you.

I'm hanging on with you for all the good that is to come.

Isaiah 61:3 "To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair."