In these 12 days of Christmastide, we are not primarily celebrating how Jesus came our what he would do to save us, but simply that God came.

Taking time to reflect at the birth of this other kind of new year has been better for my soul because it actually comes with Good News: All of life is a gift and a means of grace from God.

A few nights ago Sam and I bundled up (one of us using Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer finger puppets as a glove—pick your battles, they tell me), and set out to deliver some Christmas gifts to the houses on our street.

Christ’s first and second comings enable a “third advent:” the many ways that we see Christ drawing near in the present, in the already-but-not-yet, ushering in his Kingdom and bringing light and life, often not in flashy ways, but rather coming to us, as Paula D’Arcy says, “disguised as our life.”