This year, I'm obsessed with "Immanuel," God with us.
It's not a new name for Jesus. I've sung songs using this name before. I've known it means "God with us" for a while now. This year, though, I've been thinking on it a lot!
It means that our perfectly holy and powerful God chose to come to this broken and unholy earth to BE with us.
Just BE with us, y'all.
He could have come to make things new immediately, because He had every ounce of power to do it. Instead, He came in the lowliest and weakest of forms to be with us in the ordinary, the messy, the broken.
It's still hard to imagine!
I've also been a little obsessed with a verse that I've never considered to be a Christmas verse,
Look, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:19
When my children were younger, Christmas was purely magical. It was a time when it didn't really matter what was going on in our world or in the world at large, because pure joy and excitement took over. The anticipation of Jesus' birthday and all the ways we celebrate it monopolized all conversation and activity. The expectation of presents under the tree for my kids made every day a party.
It's been a while since the simple emotions of Christmas covered the realities of the world we live in. I don't know if you know this, but life is hard! In the strangest of ways, though, that's not a thought that interrupts or ruins my advent season. It actually enhances it.
So, life is ordinary, messy, and broken. The hope of Christmas is that Jesus chose to enter into it anyway. He did all the things to begin the process of making all things new. But, He didn't do it in an immediate way. He chose to come, to live, and to BE part of earthly life WITH humanity. I think He still chooses that today.
The hope of Christmas is that Jesus chooses to BE with me in my life, my processes, my humanity. The love & peace of Christmas is that He doesn't pressure me to be new, perfect, or right immediately, because He seems happy to be WITH me in the process. I experience the joy of Christmas when I choose to be present with Him in the moments of my life. It turns out I don't always have to be striving for more, better, or perfect. I can rest in Him and trust that He is always doing a new thing. I just need to slow down and ask for eyes to see it. Maybe that's the light that our Advent candles bring.
Around this time of year, God drops a word in my heart and in my mind that I believe is a focus word for the upcoming year. As He revealed my word for 2023, I believe God also sent me back to 2016 and the first word He gave me in this tradition. As I've looked back, I have marveled at the new thing God began in me that first year with that first word. I may not have seen then how He was doing something new in me, but I can look back over the last 8 years and see His hand in all of the details. I feel led to write about each of those words during this month as a way to honor Him through remembering.
What does Immanuel mean to you?
Does it frustrate you that He is here, with us, but He chooses not to fix the things that are so obviously broken? What if you used this Advent season to be honest with Him about your reality. I imagine Jesus to come in close when we share our honesty. I don't think He minds our bristly edges one bit.
Does it confuse you that He is near? Several years ago, I read Max Lucado's book, God Came Near. It's an excellent book that introduces the reality of what we miss out on when we don't recognize the magnitude of God choosing to come close to us then & now.
Does it offer hope and a feeling of restoration, because you know God is making all things new even as we speak through what Jesus did with His human life here on earth? It's true! If you live with that kind of unshakable faith and confidence, my guess is that you've done some hard inner work for it. I bet your story is filled with ups and downs and highs and lows. Can I ask you to share that with someone? I have this dream that we (as Christians) grow more confident in sharing the pieces of our story that we aren't completely proud of, because those are the places where we typically see the new things God is doing more clearly. Stories offer hope to a world struggling with hopelessness in a big way.
If Christmas is anything, it's HOPE-filled. Your stories and my story are evidence. I pray your Christmas season is filled with the presence of "God with us," and that His presence leads you to honestly share it His story and yours with your world.
