Life is fragile

For some, the holidays bring in feelings of despair, loneliness, and depression as they reflect over the events of the year, or remember loved ones who have gone on before them.

Time doesn’t heal wounds, it may cover them up but healing only comes from inside, and even that is not complete.

We search for answers to questions on why things happen, especially around the holidays, between Thanksgiving Christmas and New Year's, we can lose our happiness when we look back.

We think of these holidays as they should be, joyous, peaceful, fun, time together, reflecting on our blessings with our families, but when there is a void where someone’s missing our hearts get heavy. And we want an answer to why they aren’t there.

Quite simply we don’t have the answers, outside of death comes to us all, no matter our age, and plays no favorites we know none of us are immortal.

None of us know our time, how limited it is, we should learn by now to live each day to the utmost, loving each other and treasuring each moment we are given together. Most of all we need to learn to love and honor God in all we do, especially in our relationships with each other.

We need to learn to forgive others, forget each other's shortcomings, including our own past mistakes and foolish words. We cannot change what has been said or done, we can only choose not to repeat them.

We need to keep our hearts focused on God above, walk in His ways, keep our hope in Him alone. For in Christ we have hope, joy, peace, strength, abundance, grace, mercy and love.

The very things we are missing are found in Him, and in Him, our loved ones who have gone on before us are now made complete and they wait for us to one day join them with Christ as we enter into eternity together, where never again will we experience sorrow or loss.

That is where joy is everlasting, peace is all we will know, and our hope will be complete.

The holidays can be fun and exciting, and refresh our spirits as we close out the year with family and friends when we thank God for the blessings of our families, that we have had them in our lives and the hope of one day we will all be reunited together, never again to be separated by sickness or death.

The words Jesus spoke to His disciples before He went to the cross so we could be with Him and the Father ring true today, just as they did when He spoke them.

“Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Don’t let your heart be troubled or fearful. You have heard me tell you, ‘I am going away and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. I have told you now before it happens so that when it does happen you may believe. I will not talk with you much longer, because the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me. On the contrary, so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do as the Father commanded me. “Get up; let’s leave this place.” John 14:27-31 CSB

“As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. “I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. “This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants anymore, because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing. I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. “This is what I command you: Love one another.”
John 15:9-17 CSB

“Then Peter approached him and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? As many as seven times?” “I tell you, not as many as seven,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven.”Matthew 18:21-22 CSB