I like Paul Williams’ editorial in this week’s issue; he writes about the “holy terror” of Jesus coming to earth, and he poses an interesting question: “What if I do not want God with me all of the time?”

We celebrate Emmanuel and the traditional Christmas picture of a helpless little baby. But how amazingly strange and scary to think that he actually came here and hung out with us. Jesus, through whom everything was created, deigned to live among all of it for three decades. He could have destroyed us all with a word but he restrained himself and let us kill him instead.

Often small children will cry when their parents leave them with a Sunday school teacher or babysitter, and reassurances that “Daddy will be back soon” fail to comfort them. At my church they sometimes smush their little noses against the glass of the classroom windows and wait impatiently for the first sight of Dad rounding the corner to get them.

At Christmas we remember the generations who waited for the Messiah, and we end another year of smushing our noses against the glass and searching hungrily for signs of his return. We still don’t know quite what to make of him, but how we long for God With Us.