I'm leaning into Bethlehem, it's the only thing I know to do.

Aleppo is shuddering and I'm leaning.  A baby is born to bombs and smoke and I'm pressing in.  My own child is crooning, giggling, cooing and I'm swallowing the tension of this month.

How do you navigate a world that is at the same time on fire and at peace?  What do you do with the faces of children too stunned by evil to make eye contact, to cry, too stunned to do anything but sit bloody, alive, and alone.  And then, resting right up against that moment, he looks at me and breaks into a smile, a happy baby wriggle and my heart shatters and bursts.  I've written about the fracturing.  Written about the possibility of splitting into a thousand different directions.  But this time I want to learn to stay here inside this moment heavy with life and death, with the child in my arms and the faces on the screen.

Because it is December and it is a reminder of this: Bethlehem happened.  A baby was born and half the world worshipped him as the other half hunted him.  A baby was born and the lowest class and the highest kneeled.  And perhaps the greatest of the tensions-- a baby was born into a trough to hang on a cross.

We were saved in His birthing and saved in His dying and somewhere inside that tension the Gospel whispers.

When I fall into Bethlehem I land on a reminder that my God is the keeper of the tension, the light moving into dark places, the promise of hope when hope feels unfathomable.  I remember to pray, to kneel, to be so aware of salvation, so aware of our great need for it.

Without Bethlehem, there is no tension.

Without Bethlehem the battle is lost.