Somewhere cramped and stale, in the thick of deep darkness, or perhaps under the suffocating heat of midday. Maybe in the first flickers of new-day light, or lost and silenced by the fervent scurry of a whirling and chaotic world on the move, a baby has been born.

This baby is for us, for all of us.

A woman's cry, shifting livestock feet and swatting tails, an unsure father, the heaving waves of  birthing pains, push now, blood, visceral mess, an infant's first cry, relief, exhaustion. He is here, nose-to-nose and skin-to-skin with a mother and a waiting world.

This baby is for us, for all of us.

Into the dust and dirt of ordinary living, into the quivering hands of the meek, the rags of the
humble, the sighs of the waiting, the groans of the labouring, and the outlying margins of the
forgotten, our Saviour is born.

This baby is for us, for all of us.

Our longed for Christ,

Our Messiah,

Our Prince of Peace,

Our Emmanuel,

Our God who is near.

Wrapped in flesh, human flesh, our flesh, this Word has been breathing, whispering, and
speaking into it all since the dawn of time, "I Am here. I Am close. You are not alone."

Emmanuel.

Emmanuel.

Into all the cracks and the crevices of humanity, "the Word became flesh and blood, and moved
into the neighbourhood."* Our neighbourhood, right among the wounded and wound-ers alike.
Into the bitter pains and grievances of living. Into our deepest fears, sorrows, and very fragile
existence this baby has been born. Into our broken and wayward up-close spaces. Into the vast
and wide-open galactic spaces. Heaven and nature singing, groaning, resounding, reverberating
with joy and longing.

Emmanuel.

A beating heart, filling lungs, neurons, synapses, bones, muscles, skin, treasured and mysterious
new-born life bursting forth from a mother's womb.

Our Messiah has come.

God is with us, embodied in an infant's needy cry. Our Prince of Peace has come to rescue us,
enrobed in swaddling clothes. Jesus, the Saviour of the world, has come to dwell among us, as
one of us.

This baby is for us, for all of us.
Our longed for Christ,

Our Messiah,

Our Prince of Peace,

Our Emmanuel,

Our God who is near.

* John 1:14 (The Message by Eugene Peterson)