I want to write of hope and light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel and unforeseen acts of grace because it’s Christmas and the remembered birth of the Savior brings so much lightness of spirit into my family’s life.

In doing so, I share a personal sense of spiritual uplift and connectedness to larger purposes which have less and less relevance, statistically speaking, to Sun Journal readers. In reflecting on almost any aspect of what constitutes “news,” I can only magnify gathering shadows and scary noises in the darkness.

There’s an old hymn I’ve come to treasure that has in its lyrics this line: “And though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.”

I must deliberately, and with some effort, set aside a compelling interest in the cascade of crises that seem our lot under the present regime. Instead, I read of quiet manger scenes surviving — no, triumphing —  in the face of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents.

I do well to remind myself that even the first Christmas was not without its heart-break dark “news.” Through it all, God showed himself to be, indeed, the ruler yet.

If I take little hope in our politicians or cultural elite, I need grant them even less significance, for our times are not in their hands. Yes, as James Taylor sings, “… Herod’s always out there, he’s got our card on file… .”

I need only contemplate who God sent us that first Christmas to set concerns of Herod aside.

Leonard Hoy, Greenwood