MB Civic

By Michael Gerson | Tuesday, December 25, 2007 | The Washington Post

“…the hope of Christmas came, not in spite of human suffering but in the midst of it — delivered in the obscurity of a stable, caked with the mud of daily life and fulfilled in the despair of Gethsemane. The strangest Christmas verse of all is the message from Simeon to Mary: ‘And thy own soul a sword shall pierce.’ But for some of us, it is comforting that the deepest kinds of hope have nothing to do with optimism.

For all these reasons, the hope of Christmas seems unlikely. From the beginning, many have found it so. But countless millions have also found in that story a comfort deeper than their darkest hours — a hope that survives even among the ruins….”…BS

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/24/AR2007122401587_pf.html