For Unto Us a Child Is Born

Every year around Christmas, Der Spiegel takes up and treats "religious" topics provocatively.

©Der Spiegel

Although the picture looks like such, this year's text reads conciliatory. It is inspired by a prophecy in the Old Testament, "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6).

Der Spiegel writes: Children are hope, are the future, nothing has changed in two millennia. Announcements always sparkle with confidence and vital energy because every newborn fulfills the human longing for departure, new opportunities, and the future.

This ray of hope is omnipresent, e.g., in a song by Johnny Mathis:

A ray of hope flickers in the sky
A tiny star lights way up high
All across the land, dawns a brand new morn
This comes to pass when a child is born…

Der Spiegel continues The child born today, like all children before it, will become acquainted with an irresolvable contradiction of life: the future will always be "a fog of the uncertain and the unknowable," as Hannah Arendt wrote in 1958, unpredictable on both a small and a large scale, and yet man/women remains compelled to continually prepare for it.

Who doesn't remember Doris Day when she sang:

Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours to see
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be

Then Der Spiegel harps on Germany's present and "possible" future political, economic, and social situation. Read for yourself.

Hark, they are coming (Seen on Facebook)

Let me finish with the final two paragraphs of the Der Spiegel article:

Hannah Arendt ended the chapter of her book, "That one may have confidence in the world, and that one may hope for the world is perhaps nowhere more succinctly and beautifully expressed than in the words with which the Christmas oratorios proclaim 'the glad tidings': 'Unto us, a child is born.'"

It brings the assurance that life goes on. There is always a future, there must be hope, and the possibility of salvation is self-evident.

The fifth candle

I wish all my faithful and occasional readers a

Merry Christmas

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