On this Christmas Eve, may you hear the good news: God is with us.  In the form a child.  Not like anyone expected or even wished for; but an answer to prayers.  It was God who had come down to us.  Not “God up there who answers our prayers by lifting us up out of our lives, but who comes to us right where we are, right in the midst of them.”  Right into the midst of the mess and chaos and pain GOD COMES NEAR TO US!