With the onset of Christmas there is a flurry of expectations. We will feel joyful. We will have peace. We will give generously.

But sad is on the docket too. 

In the days around the birth of Jesus, there were hundreds, or maybe thousands of baby boys who were slaughtered. The image can be too horrific to even let through the filter of our Overload Mode, but probably all of us have felt the loss of someone in our lifetime. Maybe it was our own son, or a neighbor, or a boy across the country. No one is spared. 

It may seem like a misfit, sadness in the periphery of Birth. Yet sad is part of the palette of emotions, just as violet is in the rainbow. Grief is an unavoidable element of Christmas because it was the catalyst for Christ to come.

"He was despised, and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Surely he has born our grief and carried our sorrows. For our sins he was wounded, by his stripes we are healed." Isaiah 54