January-zilla

My childhood Christmas years were always marked by snacks, gifts, and family visits.  And situations.  One of those years on a Christmas tree hunt, we cut down a pine in the woods behind our house, only to find it was too scraggly.  My dad promptly cut down another one, and we tied the two together.  Under that funny little composite tree, I would later find an electric train set on Christmas morning.  

In the same vein, there continued a march of sometimes colorful, delightfully odd holiday seasons.  Each had been worth waiting for.        

But then there was always January–that depressing, unhappy, hangover of the soul that lasted for a month straight.  It was like a Godzilla movie, reducing everything to rubble, handily dispatching my fragile holiday joy.  And then it would introduce me to its little brother, a deep freeze called February.  Valentine’s Day sits in the middle of that month but wasn’t fooling anyone.  There was no time off for it, no family get-togethers, and no real season to speak of.  A nine-year-old boy just doesn’t find flowers and declarations of corny, undying love appealing.    

I wondered what could possibly lift a person up, making them invulnerable to the gray-heartedness that overwhelmed the first week of the new year.  

Little did I know that one day I would discover the secret of constant, undisturbed joy.  The apostle Paul had described it as “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor. 6:10), but it had been “hidden” inside our giant coffee table Bible.  I had been as likely to read Second Corinthians as a 1971 American tax code.  

And so it sat there, undiscovered by me for another thirteen years, when I would finally read that verse, and begin to realize that joy had little to do with establishing longer and better holidays.    

In fact, it would come from the resurrected Christ.  Jesus had promised His disciples, “You have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22).  

Now that’s consistency. 

It’s an invariable state made possible because Jesus is not sometimes resurrected and sometimes dead.  He is not there sometimes, and absent others.  “I am alive forevermore,” He told John some sixty years after His death and resurrection (Rev. 1:18).

It is faith that keeps an open connection to Him today:   

“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Pet. 1:8).

Bring on those January grays.

This is an updated edition of a post originally published on John Myer

Featured Image Image by Mabel Amber from Pixabay

About the Author

John Myer is an evangelical Christian who likes to think as well as pray. Though he loves to write, his passion also has a live outlet. He planted and currently pastors a church, Grandview Christian Assembly, in the greater Columbus, Ohio area. He is a dad, a husband, and an expatriated southern man living up north. And by the way, he has a Master’s Degree in Theological Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

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