We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.

The people of God are not merely to mark time, waiting for God to step in and set right all that is wrong. Rather, they are to model the new heaven and new earth, and by so doing awaken longings for what God will someday bring to pass.

Rather, God has commissioned us as agents of intervention in the midst of a hostile and broken world.

Our best efforts at changing society will fall short unless the church can teach the world how to love.

Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.

Jesus was a master of grace: he attracted sinners and moral outcasts even as he offended the religious and responsible people of his day.

And perhaps, exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit may be our very best defense against a materialist view of mankind here on earth.