The View from Here: Celebrating the mission of Christ this Christmas

I am sincerely glad that the infectious happiness of this season reaches through religious barriers, but in the end I have to believe that the joy of Christmas is most real to those who recognize in the child in the manger their path to salvation. Whatever happiness we find in the trimmings of Christmas – and certainly there is some there – the purest joy of the season belongs to those who “believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth” and who in that belief recognize that “no flesh can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah, who layeth down his life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit.”