I have to admit that I stumbled across more than my share of impatient people on the highways in the past month. Some may have just needed a refresher course in driver’s ed, but I suspect what I’ve been witnessing is a deeper phenomena. We arrived at 2016 carrying stresses and strains of a difficult year.

The threat of terrorism towers over us. We were unprepared for ISIS with it’s barbaric ways. Yet, our faith calls us to trust, even in anxious times . . . To trust in the one who has provided for us in the past and promises to do so in the future. Our world sends us ample opportunities to get the lesson straight. One period in my life forever stands as a time of learning to trust. My personal world had collapsed. I wondered where on earth God had gone off to. Had God abandoned me? If not, where was God anyway? I’ve since learned that God is working hardest in our lives when we hurt most deeply. God surprises us in unexpected moments of love, mercy, forgiveness and compassion. I learned that God’s love is far greater than I had thought, for God’s love transcends our hurts, our sorrows, our worst mistakes; our most crushing defeats . . . even death and life.

The good news is that wherever we find ourselves today, we have been given the joy of new beginnings. Bethlehem is God’s commitment to be with us in all of life’s journeys. A promise that wherever we find ourselves, whatever our failures or successes, whatever our mistakes, whatever our sins, our personal struggles, God has chosen to enter our lives, to love, accept and be with us where we are.

On this day Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas, we are reminded that when the Magi came to Jesus, after offering him their gifts, they left and returned “home in another way.” The God who comes to us in our brokenness does not intend to leave us in our grief and sorrow, but rather, to lead us to a life of meaning and significance. May this New Year be one of trusting God, day by day. As you “Return home from Christmas” may you do so is such a way that you are touched by the transforming presence of the one who entered our world in Bethlehem. Of whom it was said, they will call him Emmanuel, which means, “God with us.”