Behold the love, beauty of Christmas

A front door opens and the clear flame of a battery-powered torch comes alive in the hand of a man shivering in his bathrobe. The big three-battery flashlight that he holds reveals a bright band of snowy driveway. He is not into the symbolic Trinitarian meaning and mystery of the flashlight and does not even notice the myriad stars so carefully arranged above his head.

They are actually arranged there, by the eternal fingertips of God, in the biggest picture-window of all in the skylight of heaven.

Ignoring all this, he looks down upon the ground for the snow-covered mound of the folded Daily Herald. This is Christmas morning. It must not be another day for the brooding meditation of the complaining chant we call news.

On the front page of the Herald is a picture of the Stable-Cave of Bethlehem.

Bethlehem is a beautiful-sounding Hebrew word that means the House of Bread. The second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, beth, is the first letter of the first word in Genesis, the first book of the Bible.

By itself, beth is a preposition and means "in" or "into' or "within" as "in the beginning." As a word, beth means "house". The letter beth is shaped like a cave or open stable and happens to be the exact prophetic location of the birthplace of Jesus. He was born "within" a cave "in" Bethlehem. Lehem means bread.

There is more good news that is even more remarkable: Kings and shepherds and children are invited by Mary and Joseph to enter the cave and look "into" the eyes of the newborn living verb of the word, Who will become both the Bread of Life and the conversant voice of God in human sound.

There is something in the eyes of our little children and grandchildren, something we can all see, that tells us now, this Christmas morning, that Love is really God's identity and very own divinity.

George E. Bedingfield

Arlington Heights