God With Us

Dec 11 – Isaiah 7:14

 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. 

I have mentioned before that I believe familiarity to be a dangerous thing.  It destroys the sense of wonder and awe that can be found in so many things.  This verse is one of those familiar things to me.  I have heard it so many times but one things stands out as amazing this season – “Immanuel.”That one word changed everything.  Immanuel means “God with us.”  Imagine the perspective of the Israelites.  They had this unbelievably powerful and other-worldly perception of God – He had parted the Red Sea for them, shown up as a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, kept them alive through miracle food for 40 years in the desert, and given them strict laws of sacrifice that would still honor His holiness – to disobey could mean death.  And THAT God would be with them???Yes, THAT God.  The God who created man and woman.  Born to a virgin.  The God who shaped mountains and spoke oceans into existence.  Spent His first night in a small-town feeding trough.  If I try even for a minute to remove the familiarity, the story sounds stranger and stranger.  But that God wanted to be WITH US, and not only to be with us, but to be LIKE US.  Why?…With Jesus, God unleashed the power of His presence into the world.  May we live knowing that His presence is with us still.