The holiday season is for me, like the evening of a year-long day. My "instinctive" hope is for the whole family to return from the day's activities and be gathered together around the table at home. But as many of us have learned, their return is not guaranteed.

I was 13 when my brother-in-law stepped through the door of our home to tell me that my dad would not be returning. No holiday season has since that mo­ ment in time been as it was before. How could it be?

Dad's empty chair was a reminder of our loss. It was especially so at the end of every year in the season for family gatherings.  There is no "getting over" it. You just do your best to cope with the sadness and move on.

Just as Thanksgiving is a time to count our blessings, the year's end seems to bring to mind our losses. It may be as noted above, the loss of a loved one, but it may also be the sense of loss you feel in a thousand other areas of life when things have not gone as you would have hoped with your work, your health, your loved ones, or any number of situations or circumstances.

Job's words echo in my mind.... "Man, who is born of woman, is short-lived and full of turmoil" (14:1). Job was in the midst of having lost his earthly wealth, his health, and his children. We can all relate in our own way to Job's sad reckon­ ing of life's woes.  Indeed, is there anything in this life that is just as it should be?  No, not here.

But then there is Jesus, who is thankfully the whole point of the culminating hol­ iday of the year.  Even as God, no, especially as God, he suffers loss with us as his life, ministry and death show us. His suffering shows us God's empathy with our suffering and bought specifically for us a new life with an inheritance which his apostle Peter says is eternal, unfading, and reserved in heaven

(1st Peter 1:4). You have a new beginning awaiting, and an eternal, glorious home with your name on it. In spite of the.loss suffered here, how can such a

truth not give us some measure of cheer?

 Just as Jesus endured the cross and despised the shame for the joy set before him (Hebrews 12:2), so we also endure the woes of this life in fervent hope of transcending glory.