Peace on Earth

"[At Christ's birth] on both sides of the veil, a heavenly host broke into song, 'Glory to god in the highest,' they sang, 'Peace upon earth among men of goodwill.' But except for heavenly witnesses, these three were alone: Joseph, Mary, and the baby to named Jesus.

"Shepherds would soon arrive and later, wise men from the East. Later yet the memory of that night would allow for Santa Claus and Frosty and Rudolph--all of whom would add to our delight. But first and forever there was just a little family, without toys or trees or tinsel. With a baby--that's how Chrismas began."

"You can't separate separate Bethlehem from Gethsemane or the hasty flight into Egypt from the slow journey to the summit of Calvary. It's of one piece. It is a single plan. It considers 'the fall and rising again of many in Israel,' but always in that order. Christmas is joyful not because it is a season or decade or lifetime without pain and privation, but precisely because life does hold those moments for us. And that baby, [the] beloved and Only Begotten Son in the flesh, born 'away in a manger, [with] no crib for his bed,' makes all the difference in the world, all the difference in time and eternity, all the difference everywhere, worlds without number , a lot farther than your eye can see."

Jeffery Holland, Shepherds, Why the Jubilee? pg. 16, 68-69.