In the form of a baby, hope was born. Salvation for this cycle of suffering, boredom, and endings. Eternity came to us wet and naked and bloody and crying. He pierced our sense of time, our births and deaths. Our beginnings and our endings. Our pasts and our futures, in that ever present moment of his promises: that the maker of the heavens and earth loves us: that he desires to be known by us: that in our failures against others we are failing against him, but he forgives us: that through this little baby’s death the failures of all will not be held against them: that death is no master of the one who makes life: that we are invited to join in his plan of redemption for humanity and the things created: that we will fail him, but he will redeem our failures somehow all the same.

Through this baby, the one called Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Joseph and Mary, who would be born, killed, and raised from death, life makes sense to me. I make more sense to me. You make more sense to me. These proud moments and failures, these beginning and endings, these yearnings for eternity, all are put into their proper place. That is not to say that some things are not still mysteries. In fact, more things than not are probably more perplexing, confusing, and mysterious. In all that perplexity I soon find myself anxious. But it’s then that I hear the crying of a newborn baby, and my heart rests.