Don't ever give up

My favorite Coldplay album "A Head Full of Dreams" ends with the song "Up&Up." It is a song of hope and imagination amidst a world that can sometimes be filled with drudgery and despair, a song about continuing even when it seems hard and all efforts could potentially come to nothing, a song about seeing and believing in possibility even when everything says not to. You should listen to it and watch the music video -- both the song and video are beautiful. The song ends with the lines, "Fixing up a car to drive in it again, when you're in pain, when you think you've had enough, don't ever give up. Don't ever give up."

These words come at the end of an album bearing the fruit of the hard work of allowing heartache and loss to be transformed into acceptance, hope and forgiveness. It is, in my opinion, a beautiful way to end an album, this piece of love to listeners born, presumably, from the writers' own experience: Don't ever give up.

We're getting ready to enter into Advent, a season of the year in which we pay homage to waiting and not knowing, reflecting on what it means to not yet have something we are expecting. We sit in it, and we learn. The season comes, at least for the northern hemisphere, at a time in which the days feel cold and become dark earlier. For those who like light and warmth, it is a time of practicing perseverance. We dwell in mystery, things we can't yet understand, and rather than trying to control through understanding, we trust. Or, at least, we try to. And that is enough.

And when we can't see or feel God close to us during these days -- and even when we can -- we let ourselves see God's love for us through the people who love us. They are God's gift to us. After all, what is Christmas about if not the sacramental of God making God's love visible to us through a person?

"They are your gift to me," Jesus tells his Father in John 17. He is talking about us. Let's live believing we are God's gift to the Son, even when we can't feel it, and let's live treating others as the gifts they are, as well. And when the going gets cold and dark, let's pray for the faith to continue believing in possibility, that God is on our side and working for us, that maybe we're in the middle and not the end, that maybe the visible love that has always been ours is on its way if we can continue living, working, praying.

And let's not ever give up.