"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).  As we remember the second Sunday of Advent, we can realize, again, 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 of who God is:  benevolence, favor, and compassion.  In Jesus, we see the endless grace of God.
      We grant each other grace every day, as we should.  Yet it is God's grace that enables us to grasp that amid the frequent senselessness of the world in which we live, there is hope.  And this hope is not a hope of the moment.  It is a hope of the eternal, a hope of eternity, a hope grounded in the truth that reality, that is, "real" reality is born in a reality greater than its finitude can possibly make it be.  It is a hope born in the conviction that the essence of reality comes from a love which defines and, in an entirely gracious way, overwhelms it with compassion and power.  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 Johannes Sebastian Bach put it, "Jesus, joy of human desire."