DAILY BYTEYesterday, I mentioned the rush that Christmas can be. It seems that we hustle to and fro with our heads down as we desperately try to complete shopping lists and other chores in time for the big day. We keep our heads down so much that we don’t stop to pay enough attention to what is really important at this time of the year.
For Christmas is a time that we should remember to look up.
To look up to the God who is in all life’s experiences because this profound truth is never made more clearly to us than at this time of the year.
For Christmas celebrates the wonder of God’s incarnation – that God became human and so has shared in our lives in awesome ways. God walked earth and knew hunger, thirst and suffering. He attended parties and feasts and so also ate tasty food and drank good wine. He experienced both tears and laughter.
The very presence of Jesus on earth teaches us that God shares all of our life’s experiences with us – God is not distant and aloof from us.
Many, many years before Jesus was born, the prophet Zephaniah looked up to God and prophesied the coming Jesus. He foresaw the Messiah’s coming and understood what that would mean for us. Twice within the space of two verses, Zephaniah proclaimed the great Christmas truth: ‘The Lord your God is WITH you’! (See focus verse).
This cry was later echoed by the author of Matthew’s Gospel who informs us: “All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, - which means ‘God with us.’” (See Matt 1. 22-23).
In Manila, tens of thousands of people make their homes on garbage dumps. People are born, live and die without ever leaving these dumps. They try desperately to eke out an existence from what they can scavenge.
Did you know that there are missionaries who also make their homes on these dumps?
They live there so they might tell the people about God’s love for them. It is very difficult to hear this message from someone who lives in an entirely different world from you, and so these missionaries leave their first world comforts in an effort to reach out to their brothers and sisters.
When I think about how selfish I can often be, I find what those missionaries do to be extremely humbling. But not as humbling as the thought of God stooping down into human flesh so that we might truly know that God IS WITH US.
God With Us means that God has held nothing back from us, not all the treasures of heaven, and not even his own life.
Because Christmas is a time we should remember to look up to the God who is an all of life’s experiences.
God IS with you. Don’t ever forget that.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Almighty God, the Christmas story is a reminder of Your constant presence with us, and for that we give You thanks and praise.
For calling us into intimacy with you … we give thanks!
For forgiving us of our sins and restoring us … we give thanks!
For healing us and making us whole … we give thanks!
God of grace and wonder, receive our praise, and the love of our hearts, souls, minds and strength, expressed in these words. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Zephaniah 3:15b-17 (NIV)
The LORD, the King of Israel, is with you;
never again will you fear any harm.
On that day they will say to Jerusalem,
"Do not fear, O Zion;
do not let your hands hang limp.
The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
