God With Us

“Therefore, the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.”

Let’s really think about this for a minute: God, who is infinite and perfect and who is complete Love within the Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit; God who does not need anything to fulfill Him, decided to create us in order to share His love with us. That’s it. He simply wanted to create us so that we could know and experience the joy and peace and love He experiences. And what did we do? We rejected it from the very beginning. Adam and Eve began the distrust of God in the Garden of Eden, and we have continued to trust ourselves more than God all the way down to the present. And yet God still loves us. And the bond that was broken by that Original Sin was so great that God could’ve stopped there and said, “What was I thinking?” and He could’ve just let the human race kill itself out or He could’ve stopped thinking about us for a moment and we would’ve vanished from existence. God could’ve just kept going on like He has for infinity and never bothered with us again.

But instead, He decided to redeem us and heal the broken covenant in the only way that He could: to humble Himself, take on our humanity and then allow Himself to be killed by the very creatures He had created in the first place. And so during this Christmas Season, we remember that day 2,000 years ago, when our God loved us enough to become one of us in order to save us from ourselves.

He did not come with power or with might (although the angels were probably pretty impressive for the few shepherds that saw them). He was not born into luxury. He did not even have a clean, comfortable little bed to sleep in. The God of the universe came to us amidst filth and horse manure and He slept in a trough meant for the food of animals.

Is this why Lucifer chose himself over God? Because God would humble Himself like this for us? Is this why so many people have a hard time really accepting Jesus as their Savior? Because He didn’t come and destroy all the wickedness with His might? Because He came in such poverty when we crave so much power?

And yet, does not our God relate to us at every moment of our lives? Doesn’t He weep with us and laugh with us? Doesn’t He know our temptations and weaknesses? Hasn’t He done EVERYTHING to show us His love? And we still do not trust Him? This Christmas Season, may we come to really understand what is means to have God “with us”.

Dear Jesus, thank you for loving me enough to become like me in all things but sin, so that I could learn to trust You and Your great love for me. By Your grace may I become more like You. Amen.