By Reverend Laurie DeMott

Many years ago, I was asked to sit by the bedside of a dying woman and hold her hand. This may not seem an unusual request except that I didn't know the woman and I was just one of a score of volunteer hand holders who were keeping vigil with an elderly dying woman who had outlived all of her family and thus found herself at the end of her life alone. In a semi-coma from the pain medications, the woman didn't need conversation and she knew that no one could -- or should -- try to extend her life. Happy with her long years and at peace with her dying, she simply wanted company as she passed out of this life into the next.

Holding someone's hand for hours on end and saying nothing, doing nothing, gives one a lot of time to reflect on the importance of presence. We are a chatty busy race. When someone has a problem, we want to fix it. When someone is in trouble, we want to fix them. We are slow to listen and quick to give advice, and in the face of a person's suffering we are apt to say, "If there's anything I can do, just give me a call," knowing all the while that there is nothing a person can do to relieve the grief that comes with loss, or the sorrows of the human soul. How much better it would be for us to say, "I will come and quietly sit by your side, doing nothing, fixing nothing but just being present with you in your pain." But we are a chatty busy race and we find it difficult to believe that our quiet presence has as much healing power as the words of our mouth or the works of our hands.

"Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us)."

In order to save us from our sins -- in order to save us from the destructive power of our own stupidities, failures, and the weakness of our souls, in order to save us from the sorrows we bear, the hurts we cause one another, and the burden of life's misfortunes -- God descended from the throne of heaven and entered our world. God came not as a soldier who could blow away our troubles; God came not as a millionaire who could buy us peace; God came as a baby, unable to speak, powerless to do anything, able merely to be present ... but in the power of that presence we find light.

Emmanuel. God with us. At Christmas, Christ is born into your world not so that Christ can fix your world, not even so that Christ can fix you and make you perfect, but so that no matter what comes, you will find the strength to bear all things because you will know you are not alone. Christ is with you.

Rest in the power of God's loving presence. Let your heart be quieted and know peace.

Christ came into our world as we all do, as a baby blessing us not with strength but with presence, healing not with power but with laughter and joy and love. This baby, cradled in the arms of Mary and Joseph, would grow to be a man whose face held the promise of salvation.

Yet he came not with a sword, nor with riches or wealth or any of the things that we depend upon to save us. He walked with the poor. He looked to the kindness of friends for his dinner. He had no home to call his own, no bed where he could lay his head. He was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. How could salvation come to us through such a man?

Emmanuel. God with us. To the one rejected, the outcast, to the friendless, the lonely, the accused, to the man who has fallen, to the woman whose sins have condemned her in the eyes of her neighbors, he comes.

He touches our infirmities and where others would turn their faces away, he reaches out to dare to embrace us even in our sickness, and in his presence we are healed.

He is not caught up in the distractions of a work weary world; he succumbs not to schedules and the busyness of making our mark and sealing our reputations, but knows when to laugh, knows when to rest in the beauty of human life and bless us, when just to be. Emmanuel. God with us.

And when the powers of the world turned against him, still he refused to become power knowing that in the end power cannot heal the wounds of the human heart; in presence alone we will have salvation. "He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed."

This is the one who comes to us in the proclamation of Christmas: not a soldier to blow away our troubles, not a millionaire to buy us peace, not a ruler to order our salvation by the edict of the powerful, but a baby who blesses us simply with the promise of God's presence. For by that presence, we will be healed.