I don't know about everybody else, but sometimes when Christmas finally arrives it feels to me like the whole year has reached it's peak.  Christmas is all about God's gift of Jesus providing for us the "sign" of Emmanuel, which means "God is with us".  What a wonderful thought!  Our sermon series during the weeks leading to Christmas has been, "The Wait" and God-with-us is what so many of us have been waiting for.  It's what I am waiting for when experiencing the ups and downs of life.  It's what the people I spend time with are waiting for as they experience medical struggles or other life-experiences that create in us a God-sized empty place that can only be healed with God's own gift of God-with-us.  The assurance of our faith is that even when we feel alone, we are never alone.  Even when we experience death or loss, death is not the end.  Even when we are searching, we are also being searched after by our God who comes to earth as one of us, so that no matter how we are waiting, we are never waiting alone.  Christ is born.  God is with us.   And may our Savior be born in our hearts over and over again.