December can be a confusing time, as far as church seasons go. We begin the month in the season of Advent—looking forward to the coming of Christ—and yet we can’t seem to help but anticipate the next season on the church calendar: Christmas. In church, we sing, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”—and then we turn around to find Him already lying in nativity scenes, on Christmas cards, and just about everywhere else you can imagine.

Advent and Christmas have important (and different) lessons to teach us, so it’s appropriate that the Church takes time to consider them in turn. And yet, there are also lessons to be learned in considering them together. For we as Christians live in the now and not-yet of Christmas and Advent all at once. We live in the light of Christmas past even as we long for Christmas future. We rejoice in the first coming of our Lord—His birth, His death, and His resurrection to save us from sin, death, and the devil—even as we endure this present age of pain and suffering while we await His second and final coming. We live always in Advent and Christmas, always in the twin worlds of promise and fulfillment—of comfort in the meantime and joy in the future. O tidings of comfort and joy!

God knows we have need enough of such comfort. With the fall of our first parents in Eden, we exchanged paradise for a world of pain and hardship and death. It is in this fallen world—this world of thorns and thistles, sin and sorrow—that we find ourselves today. The old carol prays for us that God would “rest [us] merry”—that is, grant us peace—and that we would “let nothing [us] dismay.” But the reality is we are continually dismayed by the world in which we find ourselves. You need only read the news headlines for the latest reason to fear. Wars and rumours of war! Terror on every side!

Closer to home, we have our own reasons for dismay. Accidents and illness and death abound; if they’re not afflicting your family, they’re afflicting your neighbour’s. Add in inflation, housing challenges, rising crime, and societal division, and you’ll find plenty of reasons this Christmas to be afraid.

And yet, concerning as these things may be, there remains an even more fundamental reason for dismay: sin. At the heart of it all lies our own hearts— yours and mine—and the sin with which they are infected. Take away all the conflict, the sickness, the discord out there, and we still would not have paradise regained—not so long as our hearts lie festering with sin, separating us from God and from each other.