Like many of you, I'm up to my eyes in Christmas production right now. Looking at my calendar this month I have a hard time finding a day I will get home in the evening while it's still light outside (granted it's dark by 6pm here so that's not an entirely fair assessment).
Days are frantically spent preparing, building, decorating, and wiring for evening programs that it's so easy to get laser-focused on the end goal: a flawless performance. Everything is happening so quickly, and we (cliché alert) “Miss the reason for the season.”
We've probably all had a steady diet of Christmas music since Thanksgiving (if not before) already. I'm not really a Christmas music hater; I truly enjoy it this time of year (my wife would play it year round if she could.) One of my favorite songs is O Come O Come Immanuel.
We hear this word “Immanuel” a lot in context with Christmas, but I've never stopped to really think about the impact of it's meaning: “God With Us.” "The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" (which means "God with us"). Matthew 1:23
This phrase creates such a powerful picture of love, safety, and awe. This one word literally sums up the reason we were created: God to dwell with us and us with him. I remember reading Charles Spurgeon's 1854 Christmas Eve sermon where, in a beautiful word picture, he expounds the scope of the name Immanuel. Reading it gives me chills especially where he remids us that even Satan trembles at the mention of that name:
“Satan trembles at the sound of it; . . . the black-winged dragon of the pit quails before it. Let him come to you suddenly, and do you but whisper that word, “God with us,” back he falls, confounded and confused. Satan trembles when he hears that name, “God with us.”
God didn't send an angel to Earth; He himself came down to be with us. There is such power in this idea. I'm not a theological scholar (so if I am wrong on this next part forgive me). I cannot think of another major religion or belief with a god that would leave high atop their whatever to come be with the people who worship him. In Jesus Christ we have Immanuel, God with us.
Renewing our minds for why we are celebrating Christmas, is something all of us that work in the Church have to do on a daily basis (even if we are volunteer leaders). In the chaos of patching lights and running microphone lines, I somehow forget that the moment we are celebrating put into motion events which changed our eternity. Through one act of God entering our world, he began a journey to bring us back to his original plan that we may dwell together.
That thought really changes my focus; while it seems impossible to wrap my head around it sometimes, I can see myself doing whatever I have to in order to spend time with my son, and imagine how much more God has done to come be with us.
My prayer for you, and for me, is that this holiday season, God would teach us all the meaning of the name Immanuel, God With Us.
