In the Christmas story—and in the God to whom it points us—all of our stories find their center and their place. The baby in the manger holds them all together.

While life may give us a few opportunities for assenting to God in momentous ways, it is in fact mostly made up of much smaller and far more ordinary occasions for saying yes—for responding to what writer Roger Owens calls “the divine summons of this moment.”

Sure, to be an oak is to be rooted and stable and steadfast. And maybe it is also to be deeply connected to others—to be bound in webs of mutuality, sharing, and concern.

Yes, the angel says, much is fleeting and uncertain. But here’s what’s not: God’s promise, God’s faithfulness, God’s word of grace to us.

"O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!" Isn’t asking for that a bit unrealistic, a bit bold? Maybe—but maybe it’s still just what we need.

We do, it turns out, have something to work on while we wait, in this time like in any other. The problem is, we might wish for a different set of instructions – one that asks a bit less from us.

Listen up, church, Jesus says. You have one whopper of a precious gift in your collective hands. What are you going to do with it?

We all know we’re supposed to practice gratitude; what we can easily forget is just how good it is for us.

Remember that we are not left alone or without direction. Jesus’s words—those strange and gracious blessings—keep pointing the way to life, and Jesus promises to walk with us as we stumble along.

This was never just Moses’s story. It was always the story of freedom, far bigger than any one person, and when Moses’s chapter was finished, there were other chapters to be written.