Age after age, our people have waited so long.  The dreamless nights.  The hard climb.  Our weary hearts.  Our feet are sore.  The disappointments have been mounting for quite some time.  Eyes cast down so long they can’t find their way back up.  What news is good?  Why answer the door?  We nurse our cynicism and almost forget to keep watch. 

A long wait leaves a big hollow. 

A child is born.  It happens every night.  Someone reaches out to hold the baby.  Up rises the hope:  beautiful baby, may things go well for you.  May you be surrounded by light.  May you know love that lasts.  Here...now suck.

Whoever expected God to come in the night as a beautiful baby?  Maybe God knew that joy would not be easy for folks with so much on their minds, with so much they want to forget.  So start where we are not strangers to joy.  Build in that corner of our reluctant heart...where we sometimes put our burden down to hold the child and sing softly.  Where we might fall alseep with the child and slip into dreams, an odd dream, where we are not alone...where something rises up from forgotten places...the haunting cry of joy.