“On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me two turtledoves and a partridge in a pear tree.” We have a reasonable chance of seeing a couple of pigeons sometime today. I’m not sure that they would be true European turtle doves, but I think it would be close enough for me. The partridge, however, might be more of a challenge for us. I’ve seen chukars in eastern Washington, but not on this side of the cascades. We have two cherry trees in our back yard, and there was a lone robin that sat in the tree for part of the afternoon, but the branches aren’t big enough for partridges. Our son and his family have several pear trees in their yard, but no chukars were seen there, to my knowledge, either. We’ll keep our eyes pealed, and the birds around here have the ability to surprise me. Yesterday, before church, I went out and shoveled a bit of slush and ice from the driveway and I saw two seagulls sitting on the roof of our house. Seagulls around here are sort of the raccoons of the air. They go to work on any garbage cans that don’t have lids or whose lids are a bit ajar. If they succeed in getting a garbage bag out of the can, they’ll rip it apart and spread it around the street looking for edibles. Our garbage is safe. We don’t put it out until pickup day. There are no seagulls in the song about the 12 days of Christmas anyway.

Here is what I did see on the first day of Christmas: on our way home from church, there was a white car in the Enterprise cemetery parked near a new grave. We’ve had record snow fall, followed by an ice storm that melted into flood warnings and the creeks are still rising. So it was easy to spot the new grave in the cemetery because the snow and ice had been cleared for the burial. A single person had stepped out of the car and was bended over, arranging flowers on the grave. There was an entire Christmas sermon in a brief glance as we drove past at 35 mph on our way home.

Sometimes life is like that. It hands you a sermon that is more powerful than the preaching we hear in church. We had a lovely service at church. In place of the sermon, there were times of “joy sharing” in the service. The first was a video recording of a pastor interviewing a church member about her dog and the joy that having a dog has brought to her. The second was an interview with the family whose baby played the part of the Christ child in last year’s Christmas pageant. The baby is a year old and it was easy to see the joy in the child and the family as they shared. The third was an opportunity for those participating in the service to share brief descriptions of things that bring them joy. The stories were sweet and moving.

On the way home, however, we were talking about how the worship planners had sort of gone after the low hanging fruit. Puppies and babies are pretty sure to remind people of joy. The challenge of the season for many people is looking for a different, perhaps deeper, certainly more difficult joy - the joy that suffering cannot turn back. Romans 8:18 hints that that joy: “I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” I think that there is a deep need in our world for that kind of joy because there are clearly people who are suffering.

On Christmas Eve, Susan spent an hour or so on the phone talking to a friend who has been a widow for just a short time. The memories of that September funeral are fresh in her mind and mingle with the memories of Christmases past. There have been some days when depression seemed just around the corner and it seemed like the days of joy were all behind. She is a strong woman with a large and supportive community and she will find her way through these days of her journey of grief, but joy doesn’t come easily for her and it won’t for some time to come. Part of this Christmas for her has been going through the motions, but not feeling the joy.

Then we saw the lone figure in the cemetery. I hope that the person was making the visit on their way to some kind of Christmas gathering with friends and family. I hope that the person we saw there didn’t have to spend the rest of the day alone. I don’t know the story and it would have been out of place for us to stop and interrupt the quiet moments in the cemetery. A lot of the world’s suffering takes place when we aren’t looking with people we have never met. The fact that we don’t know the victims doesn’t change the suffering. Still, not every story is our story and sometimes we need to respect other people’s right to privacy.

It seems that the story of joy in this season is harder to discover for some folks. I hope that our church will continue to be a place for those who don’t find joy to be as close to the surface. I hope that we will always have a place for tears and the stories of those who grieve.

As retired pastors, we often do a bit of criticizing of worship after attending a service. It is a normal strain of conversation for us as we drive home. We try to keep our comments to ourselves. The leaders of the congregation have no need for criticism from a couple of retired pastors. Yesterday, we weren’t really looking for a partridge in a pear tree because we were discussing the benediction of the worship service. We felt that in place of the invitation to “go forth and share the joy of the season,” an acknowledgement of the slow coming of the joy that suffering cannot turn back might have been in place.

Then we rounded the corner by the cemetery and saw the real struggle of the season. The joy is coming, but it is not obvious in every place. Jesus spoke of grief with his disciples as he helped them understand his coming crucifixion. “So you have pain now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” (John 16:22)

It is only the second day of Christmas. I’m willing to wait a bit for the joy that comes after pain.