{"id":1207,"date":"2021-12-01T10:21:08","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T15:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1207"},"modified":"2021-12-01T10:21:08","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T15:21:08","slug":"god-with-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/01\/god-with-us\/","title":{"rendered":"God With Us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Throughout this season of Advent our focus is \u201cThe Story of Christmas in 20 Words.\u201d  On each of the 20 weekday mornings ending on Christmas Eve, we\u2019ll spotlight a single word from the Gospel accounts that helps us ponder more deeply the birth of Jesus.<\/em>

3. With<\/strong>

The key nouns and verbs of the original Christmas story are well known.

A virgin bears a child.   Angels sing.  Shepherds visit.  Magi bring gifts.  Herod rages.  Mary treasures up all these things in her heart.

But it\u2019s just possible that the most enduringly significant word associated with the arrival of Jesus is a preposition.

We\u2019re talking about with<\/em> \u2013 the word that\u2019s at the center of Immanuel<\/em>, one of the special names prophetically assigned to the newborn Messiah. \u201cAll this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: \u2018The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel\u2019 (which means \u2018God with us\u2019)\u201d (Matthew 1:22-23). 

The Hebrew word Emmanu-El<\/em> literally means \u201cThe With-Us God.\u201d   

For Christians and Jews, that\u2019s who God is.  \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid\u201d appears on the pages of Scripture more than any other command.  \u201cI will be with you\u201d appears more than any other promise.  At the heart of Christmas is the reality that we don\u2019t need to be afraid \u2013 of anyone or anything \u2013 because, incredibly, God has promised to be with us. 

Followers of Jesus don\u2019t always realize just how rare and beautiful this idea of God\u2019s \u201cwith-ness\u201d actually is.

According to Islam, it is unimaginable that Allah would ever draw near.  The great Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, and Confucianism) profess no belief in a transcendent personal God.  Deists assert that God created the universe and then stepped back, presumably never to be heard from again.  New Agers suggest we might develop personal ties with angels or spirit guides, but \u201cwalking with God\u201d isn\u2019t in the cards.  Gnostics believe creation is a terrible mistake for which God should not be blamed, which means he\u2019s certainly not going to defile himself by entering space and time.  Freudians assure us that a heavenly Father is nothing more than a comforting illusion for people starved for an earthly father\u2019s love.  Materialists dismiss the God hypothesis as an evolutionary coping device.

If you\u2019re hoping to find a reason to believe that God can ever be with you, and that you can actually be with God, the Bible is pretty much the only option available.

\u201cWith\u201d is a life-changing word.

We are deeply touched whenever someone promises to stick with us, no matter what \u2013 and then comes through. 

Every time we turn toward Jesus \u2013 the living embodiment of God With Us \u2013 we discover in fresh and powerful ways that we are never alone. 

God is with you in your final exams this month.  God is with you as you wait to hear from the surgeon in the hospital waiting room.  God is with you as you scramble to find enough money to buy Christmas presents for your kids.  God is with you as you weep over the addiction you cannot beat.  God is with you in the meeting you dread to attend because layoffs are about to be announced.  God is with you when you feel utterly alone \u2013 when others have said, \u201cI no longer want to be with you.\u201d 

It can\u2019t be accidental that Matthew opens his book by introducing us to Immanuel, then closes it with Jesus saying, \u201cAnd surely I am with<\/u><\/em> you always, to the very end of the age\u201d (Matthew 28:20).

There is no event, no appointment, and no circumstance in which Jesus will ever fail to live up to the name he has been given for eternity.

He is the With-Us God.   

And you can spend time with him right now. <\/em>
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Throughout this season of Advent our focus is \u201cThe Story of Christmas in 20 Words.\u201d  On each of the 20 weekday mornings ending on Christmas Eve, we\u2019ll spotlight a single word from the Gospel accounts that helps us ponder more deeply the birth of Jesus. 3. With The key nouns and verbs of the original Christmas story are well known…. Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1208,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[119,367],"class_list":["post-1207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas","tag-immanuel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1209,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions\/1209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}