“Our hearts are forever restless until they find their rest in God." A brilliant, articulate university professor made that statement more than 1,600 years ago. In September of this year, a cover story in Newsweek magazine on “Spirituality in America" came to this conclusion. “There is a hunger in the human heart for a transcendent experience of God."

It's Christmas Eve. The bars are closed; churches are open. Whether or not it is clear to you, you have found your way to church because you are spiritually needy. Some of you know that. Some of you are surprised by that. You who doubt that need to hear it the most. Right at the core of our being there is a hunger for something that is hard to define, almost embarrassing to confess, but which still remains when the world has given us its fin…