.... The astounding word of the Christmas story is that God is present precisely where it does not appear that way, precisely when we do not feel it so. Present and powerful in a world where the Herod's slaughter and reign, and where poor peasants are pushed around and left adrift in the dark and cold, where shepherds find themseives ostracized and stigmatized. And if we trust the story, counter-intuitive as it may sound, we begin to find it true in our own  ...

            I have a ciipping that I treasure. I hope someday I shall be able to breathe its spirit. I do not even know who wrote it: "As the years have passed,' have found my mind from time to time turning to the thought of death. It has not become a morbid obsession and'i have not been afraid of it, but in the past I have begrudged the passing of the years. I have loved life so much. Nowa strange thing has happened. Since I have been told by my doctors that my own expectation of life is probably shorter than I had always hoped, I have ceased to worry about what happens and about the passage of time. This does not mean that I have ceased to value time. It is just that beyond my disappointment at not living forever, I have learned at last to enjoy what I do receive with each new day as a gift of a loving God. Because of the presence of Jesus in our world, I am learning to trust both my life and my death into His hands. Before, I had presumed upon the march of days and weeks. Now I accept the happiness which each day brings without deploring that I may not be able to enjoy the pleasures which I always expected the years had in store for me. I do that bit of my task which is within my power today without worrying about whether I shall be able to finish it. And' leave it in God's good hands to make what use of it He can, trusting that whatever the days bring of good or ill, expected or unexpected, as my days so shall my strength be, and He will always be there."

            There's one who has learned to know God present in disappointments as well as dreams, who has learned to live by the Christmas word that God is with us and for us, not only in our fun and festival, but in our failures and our fears. While shepherds watched their flocks by night, He visited us. And that is still the way it is. It is still a very dark world, in some ways darker than ever before, but the darkness is different because He came. The threat of our own deaths. The broken marriage. The child in pain. The lost chance. But those who have learned to trust the story find He is right there in all these. It is in the dark of our failures and our fears where He seems to visit us most often, granting us the forgiveness and strength to get on with life. You shall call His name Immanuel, which means "God is with us." He really is. From a sermon “End of our Exile” by Gilbert Bowen,

But the greatest thing of all is this, that when you see this compassionate Christ, you are seeing God. This is the comfort which the Advent tidings bring - and it is all in that one word Immanuel: for Immanuel means "God with us," with us in Jesus, God going through the darkness with you, God saying, "My friend, you must not carry the trouble alone any longer - cast it down at My feet: I will take it and carry it, and the hardest part shall be My part!" The word Immanuel means that where we, with all our poor human words of comfort, break down utterly, God begins. Immanuel means that when youfeel nobody wants you, God does. Immanuel means that when your heart is crying to every would-be comforter, "Ah, you don't understand, you can't see things from my side of them, you are outside" -Immanuel means that God is right inside. Immanuel means God with you and in you, God making the pain a sacrament, the conflict a crusade, and the broken dream a ladder up to heaven. And so, through Christ, God speaks home to the heart of Jerusalem. James Stewart, In a sermon, 0 Came, 0

Come, Immanuel.