Waiting for Immanuel

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell… Colossians 1:19 ESV

This Christmas is already different from all that came before. My heart has been captured by new thoughts and new friendships. God’s Word is a sharp sword clearing a deep and wide path through tangled woods, opening a clear path for my feet to walk, allowing the sunlight to pierce through what was a dark canopy over my head. Does this season look different for you?

After a long year of pestilence, God has picked me up, moved me over to a new place, and set me down. I look around in wonder. I am no longer walking alone. There are women in front of me, pointing the way. There are women beside me, who call my name in joy, who take my hand in theirs, who walk beside me. I am overwhelmed.

I don’t know about you, but I am betting your world shut down a year and a half ago. Mine did. I tried to ignore it, thinking all the uproar would go away. Seriously. My two childhood girlfriends and I packed our belongings in a rockstar Motor Home and went to the one beach in Florida which wasn’t closed last March. We called it ‘sheltering in place’. Returning to Atlanta, refreshed by sea breezes and sweet friendship, I hunkered down with my husband to weather the storm. We cleaned out closets. We took hikes in the woods. We only went out among other humans during ‘Senior’ hours at the grocery store, masked and sanitized, to look for toilet paper and Clorox and our daily bread. 

We looked at the news. We searched out medical knowledge. We listened to opinions, both popular and unpopular. We turned the lights out in our dining room, and we mourned the loss of fellowship and freedom and the closing of the doors of our church. I comforted myself by calling it a time of Sabbath rest. But in my spirit, it felt like a time of solitary confinement and death. My sadness was deep and profound. But like Scarlett, I determined not to think about it… I would think about it tomorrow…

I am betting you walked a similar path. I am betting you have your own story to tell.

The only person I had to talk to was Jeff. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I am thankful we were in agreement most of the time! Oh, and there was one other voice in my ear: the comforting words of God. He led me away from the stories of Jesus I was reading and took me deep into the words of David and his Psalms. Here was the Lord of Battle, the Creator of the stars and the storms in the heavens, the Warrior of righteousness, the Strength of the oaks beside the river. I sat in His shelter, waiting, listening, holding on. Holding on and hoping. Watching with great expectations.

But God does not always smite the evil giant on our cue.

A friend who refused to walk the path of fear met me and invited me to visit her church. Their doors were open. I went. I stayed. And that has made all the difference.

These people did not seem to be entangled in the things of the world. Their eyes were focused on one thing: teaching the stories of God. My kind of people. I sang with them in worship. I kneeled with them in prayer. I took notes under their teaching. I repented of my sin and received the peace of forgiveness. I gave away the book about God’s family of Genesis to women who would take it. I walked forward, no longer set apart from those I loved and those I didn’t know yet. Peace began to descend on me. I held my face up to the Heavens in gratitude.

And then I received a phone call. For me, it came completely and absolutely out of the blue. The woman who called with the invitation was completely and absolutely sure of what she was offering me; the chance to tell God’s Stories again. We plunged ourselves into the glorious words of John. “In the beginning was The Word…” and the Spirit of God poured understanding and God’s perfect promises into our hearts and into our minds. Our thoughts were one, fighting all obstacles to tell the story of the Mystery of Christmas. All days and times were obsolete, except for one; Friday evening, December 3rd, 6 PM. The doors would open, the tables set with fine china and silver, the room lit with candlelight, strings, and voices heralding the coming of good news.

Again, I would be invited to tell the story of Immanuel - when God, as foretold by the prophet Isaiah, would breach the great distance between His Holiness and our brokenness by sending an unlikely baby into the world. A baby who was the very Spirit of God (who had hovered over the waters!) yet was clothed in flesh and blood. A baby who was Son of Holy God, son of broken man.

Here it is in case you missed it:

Therefore Adonai himself

will give you people a sign:

the young woman will become pregnant,

bear a son and name him 'Immanu El [God is with us].

Isaiah 7:14 Complete Jewish Bible

Immanuel. Immanu (with us) and El (God). Can you believe it? God was coming to be with us? Wait a minute – I think the tense here needs to be the present tense. God is with us.

And this one name tells a new story. God is with us! It is a story we must tell ourselves; we must tell each other. We are not alone. We are not beaten down, isolated, alone, fearful, forsaken. Our God is very much with us.

I have stories to tell. I have stories of traveling across this beautiful nation, seeing God's wonders, and meeting God's people. (In case you didn't know, God took Jeff and me on a 40-day journey this fall; overseeing a brief encounter with the possibility of death, up to the heights of mountains, alone in the clouds looking over vast canyons, deep into the wonders under the surface of solid ground.) I have stories I want to tell about these travels, and photographs I want to share – but they will be written about later.

Because right now is the time we wait for the coming of God’s Son, God’s Anointed One sent as good news to all people. December. It is the time to prepare our hearts for the coming of a baby named Jesus, a Messiah named Immanuel. I will tell his story.

Question: How are you doing? Where are your eyes focused? Whose voice are you listening to?