Government is instituted “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty” (Preamble, The U.S. Constitution). “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States” (Article 1, Section 8).

The purpose of prayer is emphatically not to bend God's will to ours, but rather to align our will to his. The promise that our prayers will be answered is conditional on our asking 'according to his will' (1 Jn. 5:14). Consequently every prayer we pray should be a variation on the theme, 'Your will be done' (Mt. 6:10).

Soren Kierkegaard in his six expositions of this passage in the Sermon on the Mount defined anxiety as "the next day". Jesus said, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." He urges us to get rid of the "next day." All earthly anxiety is about the next day. We must get free of the next day -- let it look after itself.

Christmas celebrates the fact of God's entry into history. Christianity is not the message of some abstract doctrine about Jesus, or the importance of preaching about Jesus, it is the story of the creative self-expression of God, by whom the cosmos was made. The Word of life gives the universe coherence and purpose. He who existed from limitless eternity entered time and space and took up residence here on earth. This appearing in history was not imagined.