And the funny thing is, it's okay

You’ve probably experienced something like it, even though you may not have been able to articulate what it was or is in your life.

It’s that feeling you have when you no longer have feeling.

You know you don’t have it any more.

And you can’t seem to care that you don’t care.

But the fact that you don’t care still disturbs you.

And even though others may not see it in you, like they don’t see the turbulence under the calm of the ocean, it’s still there---that unrest that’s arresting.

The contemplatives of early Christianity’s monastic movement believed that feeling of unfeeling was a temptation to be avoided, for it signified a profound indifference to the things that matter. They had a word for it: acedia.

Contemporary author, Kathleen Norris, likens acedia to “spiritual morphine.”

“You know the pain is there,” she says, “but you can’t rouse yourself to give a damn.”

I suspect acedia or something like it has a lot to do with what we call the Christmas blues. Emotions that swim down deep in the recesses of your soul during much of the year suddenly propel themselves like flying fish to the surface of your emotional sea, blasting into full view for a moment before plummeting back down with a splash, leaving you drained and enervated. You lapse into stare moods, can’t seem to click back in, and don’t care to, anyhow.

Maybe it’s financial strain, loneliness, or grief. Perhaps it’s the burden of carrying the load, day in and day out.

And you wake up one day in December to discover that you can’t care that you don’t care.

What to do?

Instead of doing, try being.

Simply be in the presence of the One who cares that you can’t care.

Advent, which means “arrival,” reminds us that we wait for the “coming.” We didn’t control when he came the first time to Bethlehem as an infant, and we don’t know when he will return the second time in the fullness of his glory, nor can we snap our fingers for him to appear now. He isn’t a genie in a bottle, you know.

But in that waiting there is comfort. “For the LORD comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones,” the prophet Isaiah promised (Isaiah 49:3).

It’s okay to admit you don’t have it, don’t feel it, and can’t seem to care that you don’t. Find rest in the One who comforts.

Bart Millard recognized he didn’t have it, or at least feared he was losing it.

Bart is the lead vocalist for the popular Christian band, MercyMe. Their songs include the crossover hit single, “I Can Only Imagine.”

The constant stress of performing can wear on a band. Bart was at that place where he didn’t have any more to give.

And no words would come.

One night, Bart hit the sack thinking about how burned out he was.

“I went to bed just really frustrated,” he recalls. “It started feeling like everything I was saying was the same. I just thought, I have nothing else to say. So I went to bed with that on my mind.”

About 3 or 4 in the morning, Bart suddenly woke up. Grabbing his journal, he began to write:

I’m finding myself at a loss for words


And the funny thing is, it’s okay


The last thing I need is to be heard

But to hear what You would say

Word of God speak

Would you pour down like rain

Washing my eyes to see

Your majesty

Then he tucked the words away in his journal and went back to sleep.

He forgot about it for a few weeks, until, while preforming somewhere else, he pulled it out. Together, the band worked on it, and in less that 48 hours, they hashed it together. A new song was born: “Word of God Speak,” which became a number one hit for an amazing 21 weeks.

When God arrives, he arrives.

In his timing,

Not always ours.

And so, we wait,

Not knowing when,

Sometimes not able to care,

With nothing to say,

And nothing to give,

We wait.

And the funny thing is,

It’s okay.