Belief at Christmas is neither neat nor safe. It is the path that leads to the manger and, from there, to the cross.
Christmas comes like a wolf in the wind, both familiar and strange. We know its shape—the wreaths and the bells, the child and the manger—but each year, it presses against us with a rawness that we cannot ignore. Something older stirs beneath the tinsel and the spiced wine, like the turning of dark soil underfoot. Christmas does not soothe; it stirs. Its story isn’t merely a balm for the faint-hearted; it’s a spark in the dry thatch of a world brimming with strife.
The Christ-child is born into upheaval: a land wrung tight under Rome’s grip, a king drunk on his own fear, a young pair wandering far from home. The child comes not to a house, not even to the cold stones of a village inn, but to a shelter for beasts. And yet, the birth shakes the heavens. Shepherds quake at the sight of an angel’s blazing face; wise men leave their hearths to follow a brittle star into the unknown. The King of all enters this world not with the tramp of war-horses but as a squalling babe, cradled in a feeding trough.
This is no peace, as we understand it. Wherever the golden-haired Christ steps, there is breaking. And so it is. His coming does not still the chaos; it splits it open. Herod rages, soldiers march with their swords aimed at innocence, and the child is swept away into exile before he has spoken a word.
Christmas is the wild story of a God who stoops low, birthed into the hay of our broken world.
The story pulses with conflict: the clash of tyrant and shepherd, of heaven and earth, of belief and unbelief. But isn’t this the mark of the holy? Other gods don’t come to us whole. They enter limping, like outlaws, or crawling on their bellies. Christmas doesn’t offer us those gods; it’s the wild story of a God who stoops low, birthed into the hay of our broken world.
Look closer at the figures drawn into the child’s orbit. They are not tidy. Joseph’s dreams carry him deeper into danger. Mary bears the weight of awe and bewilderment. The shepherds, hardened men of the hills, shiver in the shadow of the angel’s voice. The Magi, steeped in the wisdom of foreign stars, kneel before a child they cannot explain. None of them arrive at belief without being torn open first.
In this tearing, we see the truth: belief does not shield us from strife. It sharpens it. It is the fire into which we are led, knowing that we may not come out whole because for God to lead us into the furnace is to take up the work of refining the soul. And so, the shepherds leave their flocks; the Magi leave their lands. Belief blooms amid the storm, never outside of it.
But what is this belief? It is not the polished faith we like to display in brightly decorated churches or on gilded cards. It is raw and trembling. It is the Magi stumbling in the dark, the shepherds clutching their staffs. It is Mary whispering her yes to God, though she knows it will break her life apart.
We’ve grown so used to the soft words of Christmas—“joy,” “peace,” “hope”—that we’ve forgotten their wild roots. Peace, in the language of the nativity, is not the absence of noise or war. It is the tearing open of the heavens, the voice of the angel roaring, “Fear not!” Hope is not a gentle candle in the night; it is a bright fire on the hill, drawing us out of ourselves and pulling us toward the unknown.
Belief at Christmas is neither neat nor safe. It is the path that leads to the manger and, from there, to the cross. The Christ-child is the God who will leave the house in flames. And we who follow will find ourselves in the ashes, burning, but raised out of them into a new life.
And yet, even as we burn, we ask: Why? Why this strife? Why this God who comes hidden in the straw, who meets us in the hunger of beasts and the blood of slaughtered infants? This is not a god who stays far off, watching from the high throne. This is the God of the heavens and the earth who enters the thick of the fray, sinking into the long beds of mud and leaves where the world fights to breathe.
For those who believe, this is the heart of the story: Emmanuel—God with us. Not over us, not above us, but with us, in the muck and the madness. For those who doubt or who cannot believe, the story still carries its weight. It asks: What if the sacred is not where we think to find it? What if the holy does not dwell in clean places but comes to us wrapped in rags, resting in the dirt?
What, then, does Christmas demand of us? It does not ask for neat answers or polished prayers. It asks for space—for a clearing in the thicket of our lives. It asks us to hold the conflict, not to resolve it. To kneel before the manger, not in certainty but in wonder. To follow the star, not knowing where it will lead.
Belief, at its root, is not about knowing. It is about stepping forward, even when the path is dark because we are meant to carry our questions like tools. The questions themselves—of faith, of suffering, of the vastness of the unknown—become how God works belief in us.
Belief is not just a fortress, it is the pillar of fire that leads us through the storm.
And so, Christmastide becomes a time of holding the tension. It is not the escape from strife but the entry into it. It is the moment when we see, however faintly, that Light does not banish the dark but pierces it.
For us today, the nativity is not a distant tale; it is our Maker calling us to his hearth, to gather around the fire of his fierce truth. It asks us to open ourselves to his wildness, to let his raw edges cut into our settled lives. It is not a tale of ease but of courage—the courage to believe—not in spite of the conflict but through it.
As we kneel by the manger, we will be blessed, given eyes to see what the shepherds saw: that the child in the straw does not remove the pain, but he holds it. He does not silence the questions, but he bears them. He does not end the strife, but he stands within it, as a still point, a flame in the wind.
This is the hope of Christmas: not that the world is made whole all at once, but that the Light has entered the dark, and the dark has not overcome him. And so we stand, like Joseph and Mary, like the shepherds and the Magi—broken, bewildered, but drawn out. Led to follow, to kneel, to believe. In the end, belief is not just a fortress, it is the pillar of fire that leads us through the storm, the night watchman’s torch that is placed into our shaking hands, and the hope that warms the world.
