Each Christmas, there is a moment when the season seems to end abruptly. The trash bags full of ribbons and bows. Trees laid out at the curb. Family and friends loading cars and returning to ordinary life. The joy of Christmas can feel as though it fades faster than we expect.
The lectionary for the First Sunday after Christmas reflects this same jolt. Just days after celebrating the birth of Jesus, we encounter a story of fear, violence, and grief. The songs of Silent Night and Joy to the World still echo in our ears, and yet the Gospel turns our attention to the suffering of Bethlehem. It can feel like stepping into icy water—startling and painful.
And it raises a difficult but honest question:
How can we speak of joy and hope in a world where such harm exists?
Scripture does not ask us to ignore this tension. Instead, it invites us to hold two truths together: real suffering exists, and God’s redeeming love is present and at work even there.
Love, Freedom, and the Risk of Relationship
From the beginning, God creates not through coercion, but through love. Love that makes room for response. Love that allows freedom.
For a relationship to be real, it must allow the possibility of refusal. God desires not obedience from objects, but relationship with people—people who can choose to love God in return. That freedom, however, carries real consequences. When love is resisted or distorted, harm follows.
God’s decision to grant freedom does not mean God abandons creation. Quite the opposite. God’s work in the world is not reactive but redemptive. God allows real freedom, but God’s love never withdraws and never stops pressing toward reconciliation.
Naming Evil Without Blaming God
It is important to say clearly: evil is not something God creates or wills.
God is good, and God is love. Evil is not a substance God fashions, but the absence or distortion of God’s holiness, justice, and love. Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil is what emerges when God’s love is resisted.
This means that not everything that happens in the world is what God desires. Human freedom shapes history in real and painful ways. Yet there is nothing—not even the worst distortion of love—that falls outside God’s redeeming reach.
God does not cause suffering in order to redeem it. But God refuses to abandon the world within it.
Bethlehem: Manger and Massacre
The Christmas story itself makes this clear.
God is fully present in Bethlehem in the manger—choosing vulnerability, poverty, and flesh. God does not wait for safety, power, or stability. God enters the world as it is, fragile and exposed.
And God is also present in Bethlehem during the violence that follows.
Matthew’s Gospel refuses a sanitized Christmas. The harm is not justified or explained away. It is not portrayed as God’s strategy or will. It is named for what it is: the consequence of fear, self-interest, and power turned inward.
Here we must say this carefully and clearly:
God is present in both moments, but God is not the author of both moments.
God initiates the incarnation. God does not initiate violence. Yet even in moments that fall outside God’s will, God remains present—guiding, preserving, and creating pathways toward life.
Christmas does not end in safety. It moves us into the real world, where God’s love continues its patient work of redemption.
God’s Steadfast Love in the Midst of Distress
The prophet Isaiah gives language to this enduring truth. Reflecting on Israel’s long and often painful history, Isaiah proclaims that in all their distress, God was distressed too. God lifted the people up and carried them.
The word Isaiah uses for God’s love—ḥesed—is more than kindness or affection. It is steadfast, covenantal love. Love grounded not in human faithfulness, but in God’s own character. A love that does not give up, does not walk away, and does not fail.
Israel’s story is not one of uninterrupted faithfulness. It is a story sustained by God’s persistent mercy. And the presence or absence of suffering was never a reliable indicator of God’s presence or favor.
Neither is it for us.
Redemption as a Faithful Arc
When we look at a single moment in history—or a single moment in our lives—it can be hard to see redemption clearly. Like watching a stock market ticker minute by minute, the picture can feel chaotic and discouraging.
But over time, a pattern emerges.
God’s redemptive work does not move in a straight line, but it bends toward life. God responds to violence not with more violence, but with self-giving love. Nowhere is this clearer than in the cross and resurrection of Jesus, where God absorbs human violence rather than returns it, and declares that death does not have the final word.
God With Us Still: The Holy Spirit and the Church
God-with-us did not end in Bethlehem.
Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, God remains present—comforting, guiding, healing, and drawing creation toward wholeness. Redemption is already present, and still unfolding.
And this shapes the calling of the Church.
We are not called to explain suffering or control outcomes. We are called to stand as signs of God’s presence—bearing compassion into places of pain, offering mercy rather than answers, and pointing toward the love that refuses to abandon the world.
The Church is not the final destination. The Church is a signpost—directing hearts and lives toward God’s steadfast love.
Quiet Hope for a Hurting World
Christmas does not demand cheerfulness. It invites honesty. It invites us to come as we are—to the manger, to the cross, and into the presence of a God who remains with us.
We find God in moments of joy and in seasons of sorrow. In birth and in grief. In light and in deep winter darkness. Through the Holy Spirit, God is present with us still.
And that is where hope begins—not loud or triumphant, but faithful, enduring, and real.