With life comes loss, says Bishop David Bard, and no matter how different Christmas may be for us this year, may we expect Jesus to show up in surprising ways.
BISHOP DAVID ALAN BARD
Michigan Conference
It is December. Streets, stores, ads, and houses in our neighborhoods have been reminding us that Christmas is coming.
Christmas will be different for me this year.
Each of the past three years, our family has experienced a significant loss — my mom in 2023, Julie’s brother in 2024, and my stepfather in August. They all lived in Duluth, Minnesota. Julie and I were born and raised in Duluth. We graduated from high school there, though from rival schools. We attended the University of Minnesota campus there, where we met and began dating. My final eleven years as a local church pastor were spent in Duluth. And sometime during the Christmas season, we traveled to Duluth to be with family.
While we still have some family and many friends in the Duluth area, we have no immediate family there and won’t be making the trip this year. As far as I remember, it’s only the third time in my life that I haven’t been in Duluth around Christmas. The other two times were just before the birth of one daughter and just after the birth of our other daughter.
Christmas will be different this year.
Those trips to Duluth were annual reminders of Christmases past. As a boy, I remember spending almost every Christmas Eve at my grandmother’s house just up the hill from downtown. We stayed late, and on the drive home, the stop lights were blinking red or green. It felt magical. Every year, the city hosts the Christmas City of the North Parade, and it has a theme song written by a local man but sung by Merv Griffin, “Christmas City.” The house in which Julie grew up was cozy for their family of four, but when we visited at Christmas with our three children, we were more than snug. Yet that was our family Christmas tradition. The memories will remain, but they will be recalled from a distance.
Christmas will be different this year.
Maybe for some of you, too. Loss is a part of life. “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all of us away” (“O God, Our Help in Ages Past”). Loss comes in many forms — death, closures, departures, changed plans, broken relationships, and shifts in social and cultural environments. In some ways, it’s true that every year, Christmas will be different, because each year involves some level of change and loss.
And this I trust. Christmas will come, and not just the calendar changing to December 25. Jesus will show up again in some way, even if in a different way than ever before. Those flashing red and green lights late at night on Christmas Eve were a kind of crazy prevenient grace, reminding me that there was something special about life to be seen, known, experienced, and shared, and that I could be a part of it. There is gospel in that. “Light and life to all he brings,” the carol proclaims, and that’s how Jesus shows up — in light and life, sometimes surprising us.
Loss can lower expectations, but I invite us, no matter how different Christmas may be for us this year, to expect Jesus to show up in some way. Maybe your feeling of loss is tied to a sense that the world is becoming meaner, with too many people giving up on efforts to make the world kinder and more just. Some of my youthful dreams, nurtured on the shores of Lake Superior, have had to adjust. Progress that seemed secure, progress toward justice and equality and a recognition of common humanity, seems less so. Expect Jesus to show up.
Christmas will be different, and I trust Jesus to show up to comfort, inspire, provoke, touch my soul, enliven my mind, enlarge my heart, expand my sight, and energize me for the work of hope, compassion, and beauty. I don’t know how it’s going to happen. I don’t know when it will happen. I know it won’t happen for me in Duluth this year, but I trust Jesus to show up.
Merry Christmas. Blessed New Year.
Last Updated on December 8, 2025