I’m a sucker for nostalgia. Therefore, I’m a sucker for Christmas classics. Rudolph, White Christmas, The Grinch (the original, of course). They’re not just movies, they’re memories.
So when I tell you that one of my favorite Christmas movies is a movie from 2019, I don’t say that lightly.
Every year over the past several years, my wife and I have watched Noelle, the Disney movie starring Anna Kendrick. It’s funny. It’s witty. And it’s heart-wrenching.
My favorite scene brought me to tears this year. In this comedic movie, it’s the first gut-punch… and it punches hard.
A bit of backstory: Noelle Kringle is the daughter of Santa Claus… THE Santa Claus. When her dad died, the big role was inherited by her brother, Nick. But Nick just wasn’t cutting it. He just didn’t have… it. He couldn’t tell if kids were naughty or nice. He couldn’t tell what they wanted for Christmas. The only language he could speak was English (Santa speaks all languages, you know).
He runs away from the North Pole and his little sister, Noelle, goes to find him. It’s her first time leaving the magical land of the North Pole. She’s in for a rude awakening at the brokenness of the world.
In her quest to find her brother, she goes to a homeless shelter and meets a young girl named Michelle. Noelle begins to speak to her in English, only to learn that Michelle is deaf. Miraculously, Noelle begins to speak ASL to her.
I’ll let the movie itself take it from here:
It was at this moment in the movie that I started crying.
I thought to myself, Isn’t this what Jesus did for us on Christmas Day some 2000 years ago? He could have come to save us from our sins, from the brokenness of the world—and He does that. I couldn’t be more grateful. But He goes the extra mile. He enters into our brokenness with us. He cries tears with us. He feels our pain. He speaks our language.
Friend, this has been a hard year for me. I’ve been through—and continue to walk through—two of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through in life, maybe the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through.
Multiple times this year, I said to a close friend or family member, “I just want to be done crying.” It’s been that kind of year. And I know that some of you, dear readers, have had that kind of year too. Some of you have had much worse years than I.
I have held on to the promise that the babe born in a barn will return to make all things right. I have held to that promise for dear life, waving it around in God’s face saying, “You’re going to keep this promise, aren’t you?! You have to keep this promise!”
And He will. I don’t doubt that. Hopefully in this life. Definitely in the next. Julian of Norwich’s quote has meant a lot to me this year: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
But there have been times this year when that hasn’t been enough. When holding on to the promise of “all shall be well” just isn’t cutting it.
What has sustained me this year—even more than knowing that all will be well in the future—is knowing that the God of the universe is with me. He comes where I am and speaks my language. I feel like Michelle. In the lowest point in my life, God—like Noelle-turned-Santa-Claus (spoiler alert)—comes to me where I am and speaks my language.
I have never felt closer to God than earlier this year, when I was in the midst of the deepest grief and pain I’ve ever felt. I struggle to even share that because I know there are some of you who, in your own deep grief and pain, never felt more distant from God. I can’t explain what’s causes those two vastly different experiences; I wish I could to help others experience the former and not the latter.
But there were times this year—many times this year—where I felt like God was no further than a hair’s breadth away from me. Because He isn’t further than a hair’s breadth away from me. I was just aware of that reality in a profound way.
Knowing that God was with me—more than even knowing that He was for me and wanting to make all things right—was the very breath in my lungs and food in my stomach at many points this year. Knowing that He chose to take on flesh (Philippians 2) so that He could know what it was like to endure pain and grief gave me peace. In a season of gift giving and receiving, I’m realizing it was the greatest gift I could have received this year.
I was talking with a friend earlier this year and shared with her one of the struggles I was facing and the grief that came from that. I knew that she had been through incredible pain and loss. (We turn to people who have been through pain and loss when we’re going through pain and loss; we turn to people who can speak our language, as Jesus does.) I told her that I had never felt God as closely as I was feeling Him in this season. She told me she understood and that she might would choose to go back to those heart-breaking moments in life, just to be that close to God again.
That amazed me. But now, in a place where the pain and grief is no less—but much more normal—I get that. At times, I would go back to the days where I couldn’t keep my eyes dry to feel God as closely as I felt Him then.
That’s the power of God speaking our language: it gives so much peace, that you’d almost choose the greatest suffering of life to just experience that kind of closeness again.
Back to Noelle. Spoiler alert: On Christmas Day, Michelle wakes up to find a job listing at a school for the deaf (her mom gets the job, an art teacher position). And she gets an iPad. Both come from Noelle, the 24th Santa Claus.
I can only imagine how overjoyed Michelle was to get the two things on her Christmas list. But I wonder, looking back on her fictional life—one that seems more real than fictional—if she had to choose between two impossibly difficult options: 1) never being in the homeless shelter and therefore, never getting to visit with Noelle, or 2) a conversation with Noelle Santa while sitting in a homeless shelter… I wonder which she would choose.
I can’t answer for Michelle. But as I’ve said over and over again this year in the midst of suffering, “I have seen the very goodness of God.” And I couldn’t see it if I hadn’t gone through suffering. I couldn’t see it if Christ hadn’t chosen to come speak the language of suffering.
The story of Christmas is about God coming to save us. And what an incredible story that is! But I think the story is even more about God coming to be with us. To visit us, whether in a homeless shelter, a pit of despair, or a home of joyful celebration.
God is with us. God has come to speak our language.
Merry Christmas!
“God could, had He pleased, have been incarnate in a man of iron nerves, the stoic sort who lets no sigh escape Him. Of His great humility He chose to be incarnate in a man of delicate sensibilities who wept at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane.” –C.S. Lewis
If you’re new to my blog, welcome! I’m glad you’re here. I’m Hunter Bethea, a follower of Jesus, husband, father, Global Methodist pastor, and curator of books I don’t have time to read. You’re welcome to learn more about me here.
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