Emmanuel

So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son. ~ John 1:14 (NLT)

Today I heard a most beautiful song by Chris Tomlin called "Emmanuel". It moved me to tears as I replayed it over and over again, meditating on what it meant - "Emmanuel". I remembered how the revelation of "God with us" hit me years ago through the scriptures in John chapter 1, in particular the words "the Word became human, and made His home among us." I remembered being taken by surprise when those words lit up my spirit. It was like my spirit gasped, being arrested by such lofty knowledge, that God, that God Himself, would choose to be human, and not just that, make His home among us.

I remembered thinking that the invisible, Almighty God was not just an apparition somewhere, nor a mystical deity that sat in the unreachable heavens, and demanded that man grovel to make sense of life and death and everything in between. I remembered telling myself, that if actions truly spoke louder that words, then God must have had the biggest cosmic amplifier when He decided to clothe Himself with perishable flesh and make His home among man.

I remembered that living out your faith wasn't my bright idea, but something which the loving Creator had long ago taken first rights to. His name is Faithful. And if He could not bring that faith into action, He would have gone against His own name. So Faithful became flesh. So that we can see what Faith-full looks like, how He would behave, how He would live, and how He would die.

I remembered being deeply humbled and terrified, in a good way, that God had the ability to compress ALL His power into that little human body that was Jesus as we know it. And that He did not give instructions for life in some distant academic and legal way. But He demonstrated and showed with His life, flesh and blood, talk and action, tears and laughter, how it was like to truly live. Jesus was the most alive person that ever walked the earth.

I'm grateful that instructions for life and the life after did not come in cryptic fine print but in stories and illustrations that could touch and illuminate all of us. God is the greatest communicator of all, and He, in all His amazing wisdom, knew how He created us... with appetites for stories, for authenticity, and for a need to understand and be understood. And He did precisely that.

So need we ever doubt? John 1:14 says that He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness, and we have seen His glory. He did not just clothe himself to be like us, but He made His home here. He did not just say, I am coming. But He said, He is with us.

Immanuel - God with us. That's His name.

"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" —which means, "God with us." ~ Matthew 1:23 (NIV)