As I was lying in bed a couple of nights ago, I was reflecting on what Advent and Christmas mean to me. The obvious thoughts came to mind:
- Time with the family – this was an especially cherished time for me this year since Jeanne underwent successful surgery to fuse a couple of vertebrae and she had to take some time off from work to heal and Allen and Lisa stayed home during the day and helped to take care of their mom.
- The gifts that we exchanged on Christmas morning and the look on the kids faces when they opened theirs. Allen and Lisa were very excited about the gifts they gave to me and Jeanne and that made the gift exchange time even better.
- Our family and friends – the support and prayers we received leading up to, during, and after Jeanne’s surgery. All the Christmas cards we received from our friends at both Bell City and Sadlers Chapel.
- The wonderful Christmas Eve services both churches had.
And other thoughts came to mind as well. These are just some of the most important ones to me. But then I began thinking about the most important aspect of Advent and Christmas – the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. God loved us (you and I) so much that he sent His Son to be born a baby in a manger and that little baby grew up to be the most important person the world has ever known.
We know Him by many names – Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace, the Alpha and the Omega, the Bright Morning Star, the Root of Jesse – and these are just a few of the names of Jesus. To me the most significant name is Emmanuel. This name, which Matthew refers to in his Gospel (Matthew 1:23), was first given to Jesus by the prophet Isaiah 700 years before His birth (Isaiah 7:14). And this very special Christmas name, as Matthew tells us, means “God with us.” Jesus Christ is Immanuel, “God with us.”
In the baby Jesus, God is “with us” not merely to bless us in some sort of cameo appearance at one difficult moment in history. Nor is God with us in that He is going to use Jesus to help us, protect us, and guide us. No- the little Lord Jesus asleep in the manger of Bethlehem is “God with us” because He is God. The true message of Christmas takes our breath away and continues to stagger the imagination: the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the only begotten Son of the Father, the eternal Word, our Creator wills to clothe Himself in our nature, and to become man, our brother, one of us. God Himself lies in the manger, completely human, completely Divine. The shepherds went back to the fields rejoicing in Luke’s marvelous Christmas story and the wise men bow down in wonder, awe and worship in Matthew’s account because they realized what was unfolding before their very eyes: they were in the presence of their Creator made man, of the Word made flesh, of God becoming one of us.
The name Emmanuel is also alluded to at the end of Matthew’s gospel where the risen Jesus assures his disciples of his continued presence,”… I am with you always, until the end of the age” [28:20]. God did indeed keep his promise in Jesus. Jesus truly fulfills the plan of God in word and deed, in desire and presence, in flesh and blood.
Let us give thanks to the God and Father of Jesus who writes straight with the crooked lines of our own lives and of human history. May Emmanuel find welcome in our hearts and take flesh in our lives at Christmas this year. And may we come to understand that Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, “God with us”, is with us not just at Christmas but every day of the year.
