“…and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.” (Matthew 1:23)
I don’t know why this touches me so every year, but it does. Immanuel, God with us… the Maker of the heavens and earth with us! With David, I cry,
Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens.
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
~ from Psalm 8
I so often marvel that God would love us ~ humans, people, with all our of sin, the junk of our ages. Why?!?
The answer, His answer, is always the same to me …
God is love… (1 John 4:8,16)
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…”
(Genesis 1:26)
We are what He treasures, astounding as that thought is!
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)
“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
(Matthew 13: 44-46)
Immanuel, God with us, is amazing and astounding and astonishing, and truly awesome in the best and grandest sense and meaning of that word, but He is so every day if His Holy Spirit is within us, through believing Him.
Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. (John 6:47)
In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation ~ having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory. (Ephesians1:13-14)
… for He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you…” (Hebrews 13:5)
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)
I’m glad the Lord touches my heart every Christmas with an awesome sense of wonder over Immanuel, God with us. May that sense of wonder be ours through each day of the year, for if we believe Him, He is truly Immanuel, God with us every moment of every day!
Photo by Karmen Streutker Heckathorn copyright 2015