13 Dec 2019
For most of our lives, we are so filled with good things that we don’t have room for the best. While the sun gleams brightly over the sea of our prosperity, making its gentle waters glisten like diamonds, we find comfort in many things. But when the storm comes, turning the waves into dark, frightening cliffs which threaten to take us under, we find the most precious treasure of all, “Immanuel, God with us.”
12 Dec 2019
At the heart of the nativity narratives in both Matthew and Luke, is a simple fact: amid the struggle of a people who had longed for 500 years for God to act in the world in new ways, God came to be with them in a way that totally identified himself with us, as human beings. Amid the most unlikely of circumstances, to the most unlikely of people, God became man for the salvation of all people.©2003
Each year, as we celebrate Christmas, we rejoice in Emmanuel—God with us. Yet for most of the year—therefore most of our lives—we live as if He is not with us, except when we find him in those carved-out scheduled “quiet times.” But we do not need to merely settle for an hour in the morning in the hope of encountering the living Christ. If we truly believe God’s Word, that He is Emmanuel—God with us, then we should expect to experience Him in our regular daily lives.