The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that while the word “misinformation” is about 450 years old, its more sinister cousin, “disinformation,” enters the language only in the mid-1950s. Its use has flourished, if that’s the right word, since then. Both words refer to erroneous information, but “disinformation” signifies “The dissemination of deliberately false information . . . with the intention of influencing the policies or opinions of those who receive it.” In other words, disinformation is the deliberate presentation of a lie as if it were true, in a bid to gain power over others, especially those who are weary of uncertainty and impatient with mystery.

Where uncertainty and mystery are concerned, stamina can be hard to come by. That weariness and impatience affect us all. The writer of 2 Peter knew this, and in a remarkable passage, says of St. Paul’s letters that “there are some things in them that are hard to understand,” warning that “the ignorant and unstable” will “twist” these hard parts destructively, thereby causing the faithful to lose their stability, too.

But what is this stability the epistle encourages, especially in a world where, as Marilynne Robinson writes, “clearly the events in which we are caught up exceed our powers of understanding”? Back to the dictionary. It turns out that “stability” is related not only to the adjective “stable” but also to the noun, which comes from the Latin for “standing place.” The stable where our Lord was born was a fold for animals, but the word’s origins convey a larger meaning. This stable is our standing place; the star above it, our guiding light. In this holy season of Advent, we make our way, uncertain and often mystified, to this standing place. The birth we stand and wait for is the standing place for all that follows, in God’s good time.