Immanuel - God with Us
"The virgin will be pregnant. She will have a son, and they will name him Immanuel," which means "God with us." -Matthew 1:23
The implications of the name Immanuel are both comforting and unsettling. Comforting, because He has come to share the danger as well as the drudgery of our everyday lives. He desires to weep with us and to wipe away our tears. And what seems most bizarre, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, longs to share in and to be the source of the laughter and the joy we all too rarely know.
The implications are unsettling. It is one thing to claim that God looks down upon us, from a safe distance, and speaks to us (via long distance, we hope). But to say that He is right here, is to put ourselves and Him in a totally new situation He is no longer the calm and benevolent observer in the sky, the kindly old caricature with the beard. His image becomes that of Jesus, who wept and laughed, who fasted and feasted, and who, above all, was fully present to those He loved. He was there with them. He is here with us. . .
Most incredible, however, are the times we know He is with us in the midst of our daily, routine lives. In the middle of cleaning the house or driving somewhere in the pick-up, He stops us. . . in our tracks and makes His presence known. Often it's in the middle of the most mundane task that He lets us know He is there with us. We realize, then, that there can be no "ordinary" moments for people who live their lives with Jesus
Jesus paid a tremendous price to be with us. Certainly the cross was the most obvious cost. But I believe more is in view.
We focus so much on the fact that Jesus died for us, we sometimes forget that He also lived for us and lives for us still. If Jesus had simply come as Himself, and not as one of us, the Bible makes it quite clear that we could not have born the sight of His presence, any more than Moses could have looked directly at the face of God.
Imagine what it would be like to be at the Father's side one moment and struggling to sleep in a cattle trough the next. Imagine what it would be like to go from hearing the praise of angels to suffering the taunts of stupid men. The cost to Jesus is an indication of the incredible value of what He came to give us. And because no one will ever fully know what that cost Jesus, we can only begin to understand the incredible value of His gift to us.
-From Immanuel by Michael Card; part of The Inspirational Study Bible: New Century Version by Max Lucado
The implications of the name Immanuel are both comforting and unsettling. Comforting, because He has come to share the danger as well as the drudgery of our everyday lives. He desires to weep with us and to wipe away our tears. And what seems most bizarre, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, longs to share in and to be the source of the laughter and the joy we all too rarely know.
The implications are unsettling. It is one thing to claim that God looks down upon us, from a safe distance, and speaks to us (via long distance, we hope). But to say that He is right here, is to put ourselves and Him in a totally new situation He is no longer the calm and benevolent observer in the sky, the kindly old caricature with the beard. His image becomes that of Jesus, who wept and laughed, who fasted and feasted, and who, above all, was fully present to those He loved. He was there with them. He is here with us. . .
Most incredible, however, are the times we know He is with us in the midst of our daily, routine lives. In the middle of cleaning the house or driving somewhere in the pick-up, He stops us. . . in our tracks and makes His presence known. Often it's in the middle of the most mundane task that He lets us know He is there with us. We realize, then, that there can be no "ordinary" moments for people who live their lives with Jesus
Jesus paid a tremendous price to be with us. Certainly the cross was the most obvious cost. But I believe more is in view.
We focus so much on the fact that Jesus died for us, we sometimes forget that He also lived for us and lives for us still. If Jesus had simply come as Himself, and not as one of us, the Bible makes it quite clear that we could not have born the sight of His presence, any more than Moses could have looked directly at the face of God.
Imagine what it would be like to be at the Father's side one moment and struggling to sleep in a cattle trough the next. Imagine what it would be like to go from hearing the praise of angels to suffering the taunts of stupid men. The cost to Jesus is an indication of the incredible value of what He came to give us. And because no one will ever fully know what that cost Jesus, we can only begin to understand the incredible value of His gift to us.
-From Immanuel by Michael Card; part of The Inspirational Study Bible: New Century Version by Max Lucado
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