Immanuel

Instead of New Year's resolutions, I choose a word for each year. I pray and ask God what word best reveals what I am to be about. In the past, it's been words focused on what to do or who I hope to become. Words like Awaken; Confident; Bold.

But this year...

This year was different.

Immanuel.

This word just kept coming up over and over. We tend to hear this word a lot around Christmas time, but Christmas had come and gone, and still this word was placed in my hearing and in my line of sight, again and again.

And I wondered at that, but I just knew that for whatever reason, this was my word this year.

Immanuel.

This word, this very idea that God is with us, brings forth a response.

Amazing, awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping beauty

In this one simple word that holds so much that we should stop and ponder

And be shocked anew

Like, stop breathing because we are so stunned we forgot how

To breathe

A sense of wonder, a shocking revelation,

That should never stop.

Immanuel.

God.

With.

Us.

God... high, holy, vast, mighty, set apart

With...choosing to be joined to, when He alone surpasses all

Us...choosing to be joined to - us.

Us... dirty, depraved, and shattered by our own doing.

This is not just a word that conjures up those familiar images of Christmas

The hay-filled (but perfectly clean, centered, and spotlighted) manger on the stage

With a Mary and a Joseph and a hopefully sweetly sleeping Baby Jesus

A warm and comfortable scene

Nice, easy

It brings smiles and nods from the audience.

The people get caught up in the moment.

But too soon, they are back home to their real lives, where broken frames so much of every day.

All the broken pieces of our lives clamor for attention. And sometimes we listen.

Immanuel did not come to bring smiles and nods and temporary enjoyment.

Immanuel did not come gently.

Immanuel is not just about Christmas.

He is for all time.

He came to save.

No matter what the cost, and the cost was beyond our comprehension.

God with us

Came for us.

He came, abruptly, from unfathomable glory and splendor to the opposite extreme.

A dark, dirty cave, birthed on the ground in dirt and hay and filth, placed into an equally dirty feed trough.

And that was the easy part.

And what is so incredible...

He knew.

The entire time.

As a suckling infant at Mary's breast

As a toddler playing with blocks

As a boy, running and playing and trying new stunts as boys do

As a boy, growing and learning from his father Joseph as he worked

As a man, who began a ministry that was destined to end

Tragically, horribly, tortuously.

God With Us...

Immanuel.

From a newborn in a feed trough

To a man tortured beyond recognition

On a tree.

A cross

That looks nothing like the shiny jewelry we wear

Primitive and makeshift, a tool of grief and pain

God With Us...

Immanuel.

He rose again.

He rules and reigns at His Father's right hand

No longer among us

Yet no less with us

His love and faithfulness is constant and continual

God With Us...

Immanuel.