Emmanuel, God With Me - Christmas Vignettes 04/12/20

Welcome to Christmas Vignettes 2020, a short daily reflection on Christmas and its meaning for Christians

Can I ask you an honest question? And do you promise to think about it and answer it for yourself? My question is, do you ache in your heart to be heard? Do you need someone to listen to you? And not just any old someone, but someone significant? 


Within me I have a hunger, a longing so strong that it’s like a pain I feel within the deepest part of myself. It’s the longing not to live anonymously, as if I were a ghost that temporarily haunts the earth and then disappears forever like a morning mist. I want to be real. I don’t want to just be, I want to be, meaningfully. And the only way that I can be such is by being known by someone that truly matters. I need to be present to someone else, someone that will be with me. How does that saying go... If a tree falls in the forest, but no one is there to hear it… If I exist, but only in isolation, do I even exist at all?


Can you understand that? My longing for God in my life isn’t just so that I have someone who’s got my back, someone who will protect me and keep me safe and give me good things and make me #blessed. Those are nice, but this hunger I have is deeper than that. I don’t need God for his gifts, I need him for his presence. I need Him, and nothing else will do. I need his face, his gaze, his approval, his recognition, his acknowledgement. And absent that, I am living in hell. 


“Cast me not away from Thy presence” (Psalm 51.11)


Dear God, don’t turn your face from me! Don’t withdraw, because I only make sense in relation to you. How long, O Lord? How long, until you draw near, until I can have a beatific vision of the divine? 


“For unto us a child is born

Emmanuel has come on Christmas morn”


Emmanuel means “God with us”. The meaning of Christmas is that the divine entered a broken and hopeless world to give people the hope of him. To known and be known by God and have your identity found in him, there is no greater gift. Jesus was born into the world to know you, to enter your experience. In him, you are not no one. In him you are heard and seen. Celebrate him this Christmas.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you first have to invent the universe

Draper sent me this link: http://melindataub.com/god-twitters-creation/ and it reminded me of a lofty thought I had while I was taking a physics class over the summer. It is called: How to create the universe in infinity easy steps 1) Create light. 2) Back up a second, you have to invent the concept of creation. 3) You can't back up without first explaining the concept of progress and sequence 4) But you can't have sequence without first setting in place the skeleton of sequence, which is time! 5) Okay, okay, it's clear what we need to do first is invent time. 6) Wait, what do you mean by "first"? 7) First is like, what takes place all the way on one end of the timeline; the end marked "beginning" 8) Alright, seriously, we're getting nowhere with this. If we want to invent time, let's just start by inventing numbers. 9) One.... 10) Two... 11) Three... 12) Quick question, if we haven't got sequence yet, is this happening all at once? 13) Yes,
Read more

When evangelism "takes too long"

Image
Again he asked, “What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.” Luke 13.20-21 Why is it taking so long?? When my wife Jo is out for dinner, the kids and I like to have a pizza party at home. I’ll cook and prep everything from scratch, and the kids help by (messily) spreading on the sauce, scattering some toppings, and then watching me do the rest while they eat about half the shredded cheese that was supposed to go on the pizza.  Abby likes watching me prep the dough the day before. I mix together flour, water, salt, some olive oil, a pinch of sugar for better browning, and yeast (message me if you want the recipe!) In anticipation she watches it all come together in a messy, sticky bundle. Before I even finish washing my hands, she asks, “Is it ready yet?” “Not yet, the dough needs to rise”  Later that evening she might spot the glass bowl sitting on the kitchen counter.
Read more

A Brief Theology Of Clothing And Fashion

          A couple of weeks ago, I turned up at church wearing the new outfit that I had purchased back in New York last December. Blue dress shirt with a Navy Tommy Hilfiger top, DKNY jeans, and a pair of Polo Ralph Lauren boots. That was the first time in a long, long, long, long time that I can remember being complimented for my clothing. No fewer than three people responded with some variation of "Dan! Nice shoes!" when I said hi to them, and Roy Wu actually saw me from across the whole hall and came over just to comment on my attire. It felt nice. It made me smile. It confirmed that I like it when I wear nice clothing and people notice.           Truth be told, I didn't acquire a single article of clothing that I was wearing that day on my own. My fiancee Jo picked out the shirt and jumper, I was assisted with the jeans, and my friend Phil Thai practically had to hold a gun to my head to make me buy those nice brown shoes. "But, why would I need them?" I p
Read more