A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.

~ Matthew 2:18

I read those words aloud from the pulpit once a year, on Christmas Eve: a night when we celebrate the birth of hope and possibility and peace in the form of a human infant. Today and all the other days when children, women, and men who were once infants, bearers of hope, possibility and peace, are massacred more easily and with less struggle than they were born, days such as this are why I remind us of Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be consoled.
We owe Rachel and her children—that is to say, ourselves and our children—better than wailing and loud lamentation. As we move more deeply into Advent and toward Christmas Eve and Christmas, let us grieve and then sing the songs of season as our prayer and as our promise to make manifest through our very lives and actions, peace on earth, goodwill toward all.