"For the grace of God has appeared," writes the apostle Paul in the third chapter of his letter to Titus, "bringing salvation to all people" (Titus 2:11).  What is Paul saying?  Simply, that as we remember the second Sunday of Advent, we can come to understand more fully that in Jesus, God in the flesh, we see concrete expression of God's grace, physical manifestation and display of his truest posture toward us.  In Jesus we see the fullest possible picture of God's benevolence, favor, and compassion.  He has come.  Jesus is the grace of God.
      We grant each other grace every day, as we should.  Yet it is God's grace that enables us to see and understand that amid the frequent senselessness of the world in which we live, there is hope, a hope that reality is more than what we see--but which frames and orders what we do.  Jesus' appearance tells us that whatever else we may think about God, what we ought to think most about him is this:  God is loving, God is gracious, and God is for us, for us today, for us tomorrow, for us forever.
     As the musician Johannes Sebastian Bach put it, "Jesus, joy of human desire."