The Community of Christmas

Do you love Jesus so much that you just can't help to talk about it? If you never talk about Jesus, my encouragement is to start. But my other encouragement and my conviction is maybe you don't love Jesus enough if you're not talking about Jesus more. Hey, we are so glad that you are here today and you're kicking off your Christmas week with us before we dive into our Christmas Eve services in just a couple days. And today, as we kind of march towards Christmas Eve, we're kind of continuing down through this series that we have been talking about uh how this wonderful Christmas and this wonderful time of the year. And we've done something kind of fun through this, of creatively looking at some of the issues and the problems and the things of Christmas that are called out through an old classic movie, It's a Wonderful Life. And as we see the problem that's maybe presented in that movie, we see the solution that is available through God's word and through his son. And today, as we continue on and we look back my great greatgrandfather, George Bailey, right, my last name is Bailey. Um, but as we get to see this character, one of the things that's so striking to me about that movie, and if you've watched it, it's in black and white. And if you haven't watched it, become a little more cultured and go watch it this week. But in that movie, he's surrounded by this community, Bedford Falls. He is a father, a husband, a brother. He is a business owner, and a pillar of the community. But despite all of that, on Christmas Eve, he finds himself depressed in a bar. He just finds himself stumbling down the street. He eventually ends up at a bridge. so depressed, so lonely, so anxious that he debates jumping off that bridge to end his life. And it kind of brings up this awful yet wonderful question that we need to ask is during this season of Christmas especially, how can we be so surrounded by people but yet feel so alone? How can we be surrounded by people in our everyday life yet feel so alone? You think about this in your own life that we go in and if you're shopping right now in retail, you have missed the mark. Okay, this week it is a bad bad idea. But you go to Target, you go to Prrisada right now, you go to anywhere around this, you are going to be surrounded by people more than you want. You look online, you're always have people interacting with you, always people in kind of going and and just all over the place. You go to one of these fun Christmas things like Desert Farm Lights or Christmas at the Princess or you pick your thing and there are so many people yet this is one of those times of the year where we feel so isolated and still so alone. And you think about this in your standpoint and maybe this happens in you. And maybe when these feelings come, you just keep pushing them down and you act like, "No, no, no. There's nothing here. I'll just ignore it. Nobody else is having these problems. Nobody else is having these thoughts. Nobody else is feeling anxious or depressed or loneliness. It's just me, so I'll ignore it and hope it goes away." But I want to share with you before we dive into God's word, the problem that is before us, the reasons that cause it, and then we're going to get to the solution that Christ has in his word. And here's the problem of loneliness that is before us. And let me just give you a few stats that are just alarming and just I think leap off the page about how big of an issue this is, especially around this Christmas time. Recent studies have shown that during the Christmas season around 55 to 60 66% of Americans report feeling holiday loneliness. Then this time of the year when you're gathering around a table with people when you're having traditions that come forward all of the sudden this loneliness it's not just appears out of nowhere but it is heightened in a way that maybe you had not experienced before. in half to twothirds of our country report feeling this way. When you look at different generations, actually the generation that is most affected by this is our youngest adult generation in Gen Z where it's reported 75% admitted to feeling lonely in some form or fashion. The most connected generation we have ever had. the generation that is constantly talking to one another through Snapchat and Instagram and Tik Tok and texting. I guess they don't text anymore. I don't know. I'm a millennial, so I still text, right? Uh doing everything on their phone, but making a phone call is feeling lonely. And you're like, well, maybe that's just their problem that we built them tough years ago. Like it was different before. Like these younger generations are struggling with this, but it's not like that. And it didn't used to be like that in the good old days. But this just breaks my heart when you go to the other opposite end of the spectrum in our elderly generations. Around every single year around 1.5 million people in the elderly generation spend Christmas alone. I think of my old neighbor Kevin in our house in North Phoenix who was never married, who had strained relationships with his relatives that all lived out of state and who lived by himself and I know spend every Christmas alone. I'd invite him to church all the time and he never said no to me. He just never answered my question or ever showed up. He was a great neighbor. He always took my trash cans back. He'd always be there if I need. There was a loneliness in his life that I just could not crack. And you see, in this holiday season, people are lonely. And I think there's a lot of practical things that lead to this loneliness. And just before we get to our solution, and we're going to find our solution today in Luke 1. We've been going through the Gospels during this time. We looked at Matthew 1. We looked at Mark 1. We're at Luke 1. Today in Christmas Eve, we look at John 1. and seeing the Christmas story through all four of these gospels. But let me just give you a kind of a quick thing. I think some practical causes of what maybe causes this loneliness in this time. The first I think is there is just this social pressure that comes with this season. You you go online and you see the perfect families that you're like, man, that picture looks great. Like all those kids are looking I got four kids ranging from 1 to nine. We went and saw Santa yesterday and it was a disaster. We tried to shove our one-year-old in this little like cute little cozy coupe car like a with a tree on it. It did not go well. And I was like, what did I get myself into right now? And then I'm like looking at social media. I'm like, why is that family so perfect? They just photoshopped different kids on their heads. All right. And that were smiling. That's why it looks so perfect. But then you look at your neighbors. You look at your co-workers. You look at the people around you and like their life like they have this house, they have these toys, they have this car, they have this vacation, and there's a social pressure to keep up. And when we feel like our life doesn't match, all of a sudden this depression, this anxiety, this loneliness starts to stir up. The season also brings to form grief and loss that we have all lost loved ones. And during this time, it just feels that much more when there's that empty seed at the table. When there's that person that you miss, that you won't be spending those traditions with, that you won't be sitting around the tree with, and that grief and loss just highlights it. Or maybe your family is still around, but we are in a time where distance is greater than ever. And one of the things they said with rising costs of housing right now is families are more spread out than they have ever been. And maybe if you have grown children, you're experienc this right now where maybe to have a Christmas with everyone in it, you'd have to go to four different states to see all your kids. And in that distance, you can't be with the people that maybe you want to be with during this holiday time. And there's even this thing that we don't probably understand this in Arizona, but there's a real thing. I looked it up. It's science called seasonal effective disorder. All right, this is when you don't see the sun enough. The opposite problem of Phoenix. All right, we see the sun too much. But I'm even getting this a little bit when I'm leaving my house at 6:00 to 7:00 a.m. and it's dark outside. I'm like, what is this? This is the Valley of the Sun. Where's my sun at right now? All right. I don't know what's happening. And like you moved from Seattle and Portland, most of you, right? Cuz you wanted to see the sun. But there's a legitimate thing when people don't get enough sunlight, especially in during these winter times, that it creates this loneliness, this anxiety, this depression. And here's the last caveat, the last social or the practical thing is technology has only amplified this. We are so connected digitally but we are so disconnected in person. We go on social media and we have thousands of friends, thousands of followers, thousands of people we are following. I follow people on Instagram just to get latest nudes on book chapter 1 choose. Okay, that's what I do. But we like have this network, this community we follow. But if we're honest, we're still so disconnected. We have turned into a culture where our community is a mile wide, but it is an inch deep. And today as we look through the eyes of George Bailey of how he could be so surrounded by people yet feel so alone and we go and jump into the Christmas story where we get to see Mary after how she's had some crazy news that enter into her life. What steps does she take and what community does it lead to? And it all leads to the doorstep of our text today in Luke 1 starting in verse 39. We're going to see the path away from loneliness. That the world gives us the problem. The world can even show us the practical causes of the problem, but it cannot give us the solution. And we start today in Luke 1, starting in verse 39. It says this, "In those days, Mary set out and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judah where she entered Zechariah's house and she greeted Elizabeth." And we're going to stop right there and I think we see kind of our first thing and just this as this story unfolds. There's something just so so easy and simple about this. The first path away from loneliness that we see in today's text is how do we how do we make sure we are moving towards were we engaging one another in hardships. Listen to what Mary does here. As soon as she gets news from an angel saying that she is going to be pregnant and give birth to the savior of the universe. Put that in weight. For example, an engaged teenage girl all of a sudden tells she's pregnant, which is not going to make her husband happy, right? And then you're going to give birth to God in human form. How are you going to raise God? That's the next question. After you give birth and explain this to your husband, when she gets this news that is probably overwhelming, that is mixed with joy and anxiety, that that is mixed with excitement and fear. It says the first thing she does, she doesn't actually go tell Joseph. She's like, I'm gonna leave that to the angel. He's gonna he's gonna take care of this, right? But she hurried to a town in the hill country to see her cousin Elizabeth. That Mary when she came into this hardship in her life, she ran to a family member, a friend, someone she trusted to find comfort in that situation. And my first question as we get into is, do you have someone that you run to when times are tough? Do you have someone that you can go see and you can, and here's what's crazy about this is Mary didn't like call or send a letter before she went to Elizabeth. I get it. They didn't have phones, so you couldn't text her and say, "You at home, right?" Uh, but she could have sent a letter. She could have sent someone behind, but she just shows up at her house. Like, does anyone ever show up at your house and they're just like in your house? you gave him a key or something, but she's just there. And and here it's like, do you have people that when life is tough, you just pick up the phone or you just drive in the car and you go see them? One of the person's people for me in my life is my father-in-law, Monty. And I love my parents, but I also love my in-laws, okay? But but my my father-in-law was also my pastor as I was a student and kind of after that and grew up in there. So, I will call my father-in-law and and here's the funny thing is I call him when I have problems thinking he's going to give me wisdom and all he does is ask me questions. It's like I'm talking to Yoda or something. Like I'm like, "Tell me how to fix the issue." He's like, "Do you think there's an issue?" He's like, "Yes, that's why I'm calling you. All right. Well, how do you feel about that issue? I feel bad. So, tell me the solution to it." Right? But he's the person when I have hardship, when I have all these feelings in my life, I know I can call him. I can run to him and I can bounce things off of. Guys, this life is tough. This life is hard. When we're going through the valleys, we're in situations just like Mary is where there's a mix of maybe fear and excitement, of joy and anxiety. We need people that we can run to. But the story keeps going. In verse 41, it says, "When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped inside her." This baby is John the Baptist. We actually looked at the story of John the Baptist who proclaimed Jesus ministry before he came. And it says, "The baby leaped inside her and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit." Then the then the child or then she exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you. She's talking to Mary among women, and your child will be blessed." She said, "How could this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" Elizabeth is by the Holy Spirit is being informed by all this amazing stuff that is happening. Verse 44, she said, "For you see, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped for joy inside me. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill what he has spoken to her." You see, when we have these times of loneliness, the path away from this is not only are we engaging one another in our hardship, but we're also encouraging one another in faithfulness. Here, here's what I love about these two ladies stories is both Mary and Elizabeth were going through some scary times. Mary, obviously, we we covered her story. She's having the child of God and it's this miraculous birth. And Elizabeth is having her own crazy story. Elizabeth was old. She was past pregnancy years. But it was a miracle that her and Zechariah then got pregnant. But here's the best part. When she got pregnant, Zechariah then became mute. God said, "You will not speak again until the baby is born." I think all husbands should just become mute during a pregnancy. I'm like, Zechariah had this thing figured out. All right. I'm not having any more kids, but through three pregnancies, I wish I was mute. All right. I would have saved my wife a lot of trouble and said a lot less stupid things during that time. It's like, are you going to, you know, when your wife says, "Are you going to say something?" Zechariah's like, he's like, "Couldn't it if I wanted to, right?" Um, so she's navigating like, "How does she get through this entire pregnancy with her husband not being able to say anything?" I don't know if that was good or bad. Um, but and she's going through this and then she knows that that the baby inside her stomach, he's going to be a big deal spiritually, too. He's going to be John the Baptist. He's going to be the next prophet of Israel. He's going to eat locust and bugs like Jackie did last week. I am not doing that again. If I preached that sermon, I would have taken a very different path away from eating locust and honey. I'm just going to say that. But she had all these different fears inside her head. But I love when these women come together. There is just this spirit of encouragement that goes back and forth. And we're going to see Mary in just a second and what she's going to get to in her song. But Elizabeth starts this and she's just the encourager. She knows what Mary is going through. She knows the fear inside Mary's bones, the anxiety of what is coming. And all she does is encourage her to trust God, to keep going, to know that there will be blessings through this and that the child will be blessed because of the steps she is walking. Do you have a person you go to in hardships, but do you also have a person you go to that will encourage you? I have great encouragers in my life as well. And and here's just kind of pull back the curtain for a second is I am not naturally an optimistic person. I'm a critical thinker. Sometimes highlighted on the critical side. All right? Is I get to see sometimes the problems and everything. And I think God wired my brain like that for a reason. So I can see solutions so I can see what's wrong and how do we make it right. But sometimes I just get stuck in the critical side. And I have people I can call that are just some of the most encouraging people in my life. My my buddy Jeremiah, he's a pastor over in North Phoenix. As I called Jeremiah, he is just the happiest guy ever. But now he's encouraging me cuz he's running marathons. And I think I'm angry as I see his stuff online cuz it makes me feel that much more lazy and that I need to do something. All right. But but he's just a great encourager for me. And when I get in these times where I'm down, I have someone I can just call and you can just breathe the life of, hey, just keep trusting God. Just keep following it. Just keep pouring into your family, being the breath of air that I need. And you see, as we walk down this path, we're seeing how God lines things up that we need people that we can run to when it's hard. We need people like Elizabeth that can just speak these words of encouragement. But the story keeps going in verse 46. And I love this because then Mary breaks out into this song, this praise, this poem here. And it says this in verse 46. It says, "And Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my savior, because he has looked with favor on the humble condition of his servant. Surely from now on, all generations will call me blessed." You think about Mary was right in that prophecy is from generations to generations people have looked on Mary fondly and seen the blessing she is. Some parts of Christianity have actually taken that too far and made idols out of Mary. But we see Mary knew this was a monumental time in history that I'm going to be a pivotal part of history and she recognized the weight of that. But she continues on in verse 49 because the mighty one. She doesn't say I'm blessed because of what I'm doing, but she gives she gives glory to God because the mighty one God has done great things for me and his name is holy. She continues, "His mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear him. He has done a mighty deed with his arm. He has scattered the proud because of the thoughts of their hearts. He has toppled the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly. He has satisfied the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering his mercy to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he spoke to our ancestors. You see, the path away from loneliness is not just that we're engaging one another in hardships, not that you're just encouraging one another in faithfulness, but that we're also exposing one another to our passion. I I love Mary's song here. And and this song is often called the Mary's Magnificat that it's like this masterpiece song, this poem that just seeks of the praise of God. And Mary, as she's in this situation where all these feelings are going through her head, she can't help but just to have this outburst of praise for God. her heart is like so overwhelmed that as she's scared as she's running to Mary or running to Elizabeth not knowing what to do she gets to this point after Elizabeth's encouraging her that her heart and her words just overflow with praise and and the beautiful thing here what I love so much is she's just sharing with Elizabeth the passion that just cannot be contained in her heart and I think this is important for us is it's almost like this gut check that we have to have. Is our relationship with God? Is our faith so infectious, so passionate, so overflowing that it can't help but just a pour out to the people around us? Do you love Jesus so much that you just can't help to talk about it? If you never talk about Jesus, my encouragement is to start. But my other encouragement and my conviction is maybe you don't love Jesus enough if you're not talking about Jesus more. And whether you're in a secular environment or not, your passion for your faith, your passion for what you love to do should naturally exude from yourself. I always love meeting people and talking to them and having conversation. Just last night, uh I went and um we went to my wife's uh she works part-time and she works at a doctor's office and we went to their Christmas party last night. So I'm getting to meet and and being the spouse at a Christmas party is not my forte for forte. Okay. I like feel like um like what do I do right now? Like I I never know what to do. I don't know anyone. So I'm just like trying to chat with the other guys and I was chatting with some of the other husbands in the husband corner or something like that. And we're just like I was like what do you do man and then what are you passionate about? And then this guy just went on and on about like smoking meat but then cast irons and like I have a Blackstoneone from Sam's Club and I know a little bit about cooking but he talked about it for like 30 minutes and I was like I don't even know what you're saying anymore but I know you love food and you love to make it in this way and he just couldn't help but to talk about it. Like there's four times where somehow the conversation was steered back towards smoking and his cast iron and everything else. I'm like, "Dude, you really love this food." Do we love Jesus that much that our conversations are turning back to him? Do you have people around you where your passion in life is just overflowing to the people around you? And I just love what we see with Mary here that is as this relationship blossoms with Elizabeth, this friendship they have, all of a sudden they have this common thing they're going through where they're trusting God in the hard times. They're encouraging one another in it, but then they're overflowing with their passion for God and how he's using them for his will. And this section ends with just a small little verse, but which is so telling. And it says, "And Mary stayed with her about three months. Then she returned to her home." It didn't say Mary stayed overnight and then she said, "All right, I'm headed out. I'm going to go." And this was not a short walk. It it was a distance she had to travel to get there. But she stayed with her for 3 months. 3 months in the form of a pregnancy is a trimester. They spent a whole trimester together as pregnant ladies bonding over that time. And this, if this was Mary's first trimester, that's usually, I think, when they were the most sick. I'm pretty sure that's right. Um, but I'm a little rusty on my pregnant ladies. All right. Um, I'm not going to be around anymore in my house uh after that. But there was bonding time here. And and here's what I just love is I hear this complaint all the time in our world today is I just don't feel like I have a community. I just don't feel close. And people will come to church and they're like, you know what? I just couldn't find how I belonged. I couldn't just fit in. I just didn't find uh where I was like accepted and loved and and walked around. I just didn't feel like I had my people there. And we see for Mary, it didn't happen overnight. She hung out for three months just doing life with Elizabeth, of preparing meals, going to the market, hanging out with friends, cleaning around their village, of just doing life together. And we are in this culture where we want to microwave community instead of crockpotting it. And I don't know about you, but I am one now. I hate everything that comes out of the microwave. And I love everything that comes out of the crockpot. It's a passion of mine. I'll talk to you more about it later if you want to chat about it. But we want to microwave community when it's a crock-pot deal. This past January, my wife and I, when we had come here uh to Cross Church Surprise from our Phoenix um location, we said, "Hey, we want to start a small group in our home." and and we were passionate like we want a young adult small group. We want those 18 to 30 year olds who are not married yet who don't feel like they have a place in the church. We want to host them and be with them and do life with them. And and here was the fun thing about that is through January through now and we took a break for summer when we've had our group we've probably had 40 different people come in and out of our home. But not all 40 show up every week. Actually a lot of those never came back and they're like I don't like these people. I'll never come back. Like that they I went to the pastor's house. He had four kids. He was screaming at him like, "I don't want to go back there." But we have about 15 to 20 who show up consistently. And now I get to know them. I get to be with them. I get to make fun of them cuz I know how to make fun of them because I know about their personality. We get to read the Bible together. And that community over the past night or past year has slowly come together not overnight but as doing life slowly day in week in month in after time as we get to grow together. And you see this is the beauty of the church here. This is the beauty of community. is the beauty of the road map we see from scripture is the path away from loneliness is we just exist with one another in community. We just get to do life with one another. We just get to be together and and have this moments where instead of just trying to move really quick and saying, "Hey, you go be my best friend." It usually doesn't happen that way of we just get to do life and we get to see how God brings us closer and closer together. how we start letting barriers down and letting other people in in those relationships grow stronger with one another. And in this passage, I just love the beauty and the path that God starts to take us down. How we weave through this story and we get to see Mary and Elizabeth of just getting bonded together, that they get to take a different path than our world shows. But here's what I love more than any of this. as we see in in really the solution that this gets to of how do we find community not like what we see in it's a wonderful life where we feel so alone in the crowd of people of how do we through the crowd find our people find our hearts find our community be bonded together well I think ultimately this culminates in just the next chapter over in Luke chapter 2 starting in verse 15 that as this story builds and and Mary goes back home and all of a sudden they find out and you and some of you will know this Christmas story is they're in their hometown of Nazareth but instead they have to go to Bethlehem to be registered for this and all these crazy events start happening but as the birth of Jesus comes all of the sudden God starts talking to other people outside of Mary and Joseph's story and in verse 15 it says this when the angels had left them and returned uh to heaven The shepherds said to one another, the angels had appeared to the shepherds. They had said, "Hey, the Messiah, the Savior of the world is born. Go see him." And the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go straight to Bethlehem. Let us see what has happened which the Lord has made known to us." Verse 16, they hurried off and found both Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger. After seeing them, they reported the message they were told about the child. Think about this for a second. Mary and Joseph are probably like, "Who are these shepherds that smell just as bad as this barn? Maybe even more. Like, who are these people?" They're like, "Oh, God sent these people." It has he's telling them, it says in in verse 16, and it says after they find them, after they see them, verse 18, it says, "All who heard it were amazed at what the shepherd said to this." A and here he says verse 19 as they were hearing this Mary was treasuring up all these things in her heart and she was meditating them on them after these strangers came to see and told them about all they had heard all of sudden this community was forming in this time in verse 20 it says the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things they had seen and heard which were just as they had been holds. You see, here's what I love as this story just continues to build. We see it starts out in Luke and the story of Mary and Elizabeth, how they're in an uncertain situation, how they're afraid, how they're probably anxious, how in some ways they probably feel so alone and isolated and unqualified to go through this life. But God gives paths to finding community. God links Mary up with Elizabeth. As the story continues, God brings Joseph and Mary closer together on the same mission to be husband and wife and to not separate but to follow out this thing of you are going to raise God in human form. And then as the story continues, as they're feeling scared and isolated, as they have a baby in a barn, which is not the way they imagined it, all of a sudden, God sends these shepherds to arrive on the scene. They said, "Hey, we knew this was going to happen." These angels told us about this. And instead of saying like, "Hey, strangers, we don't know. Go away." Instead, they just had a whole worship scene burst out in front of them. And all of a sudden, I'm sure the shepherds got added to Mary and Joseph's Christmas card list from then on out. They were sending him a picture probably every year of, hey, here's what Jesus did this year. He walked on water at two. It was pretty awesome, right? And and they're like communicating and seeing him and all this builds that all this community happened. The shepherds go back and they're not lonely and isolated in the field and said they're worshiping, they're praising, they're telling their friends about it. And all this community happened because of the center of the Christmas story in Jesus Christ. And this is the wonderful truth of this whole thing is that the true community of Christmas that we see built here that we can see built in our lives today is only available through the Christ of Christmas. You see, here's what united all of them. It it wasn't just a a common place they went every now and then. It wasn't that they lived in the same village. It wasn't that they did the same job. It wasn't that they had the same family members. It was that they all went to see the same person in the form of Jesus Christ. that their community was built, their community was centered on seeking, on seeing and on trusting the savior of the universe. And when we fast forward to 2025, here's how I think we make the mistake in our world today that too often we look to make community with people that are just like us. We want to find people that maybe just have the same job, that have the same amount of kids, that live in the same place, that like the same things. And those can be great things to unite us. But those are part of friendships that are just part of the picture, but do not make up the whole community that God wants for us. And the beautiful thing about the church at large is that God brings us to a place, not to say you go to church, but that you come and you get to create the church. You get to come together with people who are not like you, who might make more or less money than you, who might come from a more or less messed up background than you, who might have more or less kids than you. I have more kids than most of you, so I got that covered, right? It's like you come to a place that people have different jobs in different interests, in different hobbies, in different things. But when we come to here, we come together under one thing, the banner of Jesus Christ. And the beauty we see in this Christmas story is that although they were different, they came to see the savior of the world, to trust with their eyes that he is truly here, to believe that he can truly change the story, and to then go share that news with the rest of the world around them. Church, my prayer in this season that so often when we're not careful can derail us to the path of anxiety and loneliness and depression and all these emotions that make us run further from God and people than closer to him. is that when the temptation for those sets in that we run to the Savior and we run to the church to find our community to be involved in what God is doing. And maybe today as you hear this, you're like, well, what is my step to do that? Maybe if you know Jesus in this new year where we talk about taking your next step, you need to get involved in your community. in a Bible group, in a men's ministry, in a women's ministry, in youth, in mommy and me. You need to find your community that is not going to be overnight microwaved, but you need to start turning on the crockpots, letting the relations simmer and seize together and letting life just do its thing to bond us closer to people and closer to our God. And maybe you're like, I I I don't know if I'm there yet. I don't even know if I like God enough. I definitely don't like his people enough yet. Maybe today as you hear these words, as you hear this story that God has, my prayer is that God move in your heart, that you see the problem of eternal loneliness away from him and you find the true solution and the God of the universe, Emmanuel, the God that is with us in the Christ of the Christmas story that We see before us.