Where there is no hope, there is Christmas. And where there is no Christmas, there is no hope.

Hope is not some thin thing that is subject to the winds of fate, but it is crafted hard by the hands of God.

Once faith dies, the death of hope follows hard on its heels.

God chose to deliberately venture into and intentionally occupy depths far below and infinitely beyond that which any human has ever descended, and then to raise Himself back up to glory from those horridly dark places. And I pray that we never miss the fact that Christmas is God’s invitation for us to join Him in the rising.

God’s decision to reach out in such dramatic fashion as to lay all rightful privilege aside and be born into abject destitution tells us that His passion for us exceeds our desire for Him. And maybe we should commit to evening that up a bit.

This is the wonder of Christmas, that in the solitary form of an impoverished infant God has handed me everything that I could never create so that I can be everything that I could never be.