A few days ago, former Senator Ben Sasse shared a Christmas announcement no one ever wants to write.
At just 53 years old, he has been diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer. His words were blunt and simple: "Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it's a death sentence." And then, with equal clarity, he added something most of us spend our lives trying not to think about: "But I already had a death sentence before last week too - we all do."
That line has stayed with me.
Sasse didn't offer false comfort or Hallmark optimism. In fact, he explicitly rejected it. "Often we lazily say ‘hope' when what we mean is ‘optimism,'" he wrote. The difference Sasse notes is not semantic: optimism imagines things will work out; Christian hope insists that even when they don't, God has already acted decisively in history.
It was extremely moving to me how Sasse chose to frame this moment during the Christmas season: "There's not a good time to tell your peeps you're now marching to the beat of a faster drummer - but the season of advent isn't the worst." The weeks leading up to Christmas were never intended to be sentimental cheer layered over pain. They're meant to teach us how to wait in the dark while clinging to a promise we cannot yet see.
Some of you reading this are walking through your own darkness right now - illness, grief, loneliness, fear about what comes next. Sasse gives language to what that feels like: hope spoken "with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears." If that's you, hear this clearly:
Christian hope is not an abstraction. It is anchored to a real Deliverer, "born at a real time, in a real place."
God entered history not to avoid suffering, but to redeem it.
Others of you may read Sasse's words from a place of relative calm. Your life is stable, your routines are intact, and your Christmas lights are glowing. If so, let his announcement serve as a sober kindness. "Sure, you're on the clock," one of his friends told him, "but we're all on the clock." None of us knows how much time remains. The question is not whether the clock is ticking, but what we are doing with the time we've been given.
Scripture is relentless on this point. Jesus warns against storing up treasures that time and death can steal, urging us instead to invest in what endures. Advent presses that urgency without despair. It reminds us that this world is not the home we were made for - one "with foundations and without cancer," as Sasse put it - but that for those who know Jesus, such a home is promised to us.
The former senator closed his note by quoting Isaiah: "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light." The Light of the World, Jesus, does not deny the darkness.
He pierces it.
He defeats it.
He overwhelms it.
This Christmas, whether you are grieving or grateful, unsettled or at peace, may that light reorient your heart. Life is fragile. Time is short. Hope is real. But the Son of God has been given to us.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.
