Today, I again struggle to find the right words.

I sit here in my warm, familiar home with a reasonable expectation that tomorrow will come, that my family will be safe, that the patterns of my life will continue uninterrupted. I carry a quiet assumption that the future will unfold as planned.

And yet, for many around us, that sense of stability feels increasingly thin.

There are neighbors living with fear close to the surface. Families who are carrying exhaustion and uncertainty, children who are absorbing anxiety they did not choose, and parents who are wondering what kind of country their children are growing into. For some, hope feels postponed. For others, it feels misplaced.

I pray, I read, I listen, and I write.

And still, I struggle to find words that can adequately name what is happening among us.

Perhaps, that is because there are no easy words.

Our nation feels divided in ways that definitely can no longer be even remotely confused as abstract. Our public life feels brittle to even look at. Trust has eroded to nothingness, empathy has fallen away, and fear seems to be shaping our conversations more than love. If I am honest, I am not always sure how to participate in the healing of something that feels so deeply fractured.

As anger sharpens, as dignity is treated as optional, as entire communities feel unseen or unheard, I grieve. As an American, I sit with the sorrow of a nation that seems unsure of who it is, or who it belongs to. A nation where human life seems to depend on political standing more than the imago Dei (image of God) within each person.

As a person of faith who just celebrated a season that believes that God truly chose to dwell among us, not as power or spectacle but as vulnerability and love, then perhaps I have to also hold on to the belief that that incarnational work did not end on Christmas Day. Perhaps the work of Emmanuel only begins when we claim it long after the lights have come down and the carols have faded.

Maybe the question now is not whether God has come, but whether we will live as though God is still here. Whether we will be Christians who hold the line, or Christians who remind that Jesus’ earthly ministry focused far more on those whose words were choked out of their mouths before they could utter them. Instead of accepting that, he restored them to a place of value where their words mattered again as he reminded them that their voices always mattered to God.

Maybe post-Advent faith, at least for those of us who claim to follow Christ, is less about waiting and more about witness. Less about anticipation and more about embodiment. Perhaps, it is less about hoping for peace and more about practicing it.

Today, we may struggle, again, to find the right words.

But our neighbors, our communities, our nation cannot wait for perfect language. So, be the peace. Be the grace. Be the hope.

And if you cannot find the words, be them.

“Yes, there is considerable evil in the world, and we mustn’t be starry-eyed and pretend it isn’t so. But that isn’t the last word; that isn’t even the most important part of the picture in God’s world.”

— Desmond Tutu