Immanuel

 “…And they shall call his name Immanuel (which means God with us),” Matthew 1:23.

It was a very good day to rend the heavens.  It was a messy, mundane and ordinary day.  The days of our lives so predictable and unpredictable.  Everyday was a good day to rend the heavens.  Everyday a blind man, a beggar, a sickly female or adulterous wife were thrown across His path.  All of these days were good days for the Son of David to rend heaven and have mercy… .good days for God with us.

God with us.  Mmmm.  Just pause.  God…. .with… .us.

Not God and then us.  Not God and us.  Not God.  Not us.  Not God and maybe us, God or us, God despite us.  No, God with us.  God… .with…. .us.  Say it again: God with us… 

I am feeling something here.  Something embracing.  Something so tight and interwoven that if you remove one part, the other part deeply suffers.  The Son of David, Immanuel, wove Himself into our tapestry.  He became a permanent generational thread.  He had a mother, a father, sisters and brothers.  The Son of David had real friends.  These relationships were not manufactured for the purpose of staging a Divine drama.  God wasn’t playing on planet earth.  This was not daytime TV.  God, in the person of the Son, got Himself woven into humanity. 

The gospel accounts run across our Scriptures like little acts in a cinematic production, however, I want to convince you that the Son of God, Immanuel, did not descend upon us like an actor intending to dramatize His heavenly kingdom.  Immanuel got under our skin and carried our load.  He had come to transact and partner with blind beggars.  He walked on their common ground.  He knew the desperation of their begging.  He felt it in His own human chest.  Do you want to be an intercessor for a human being in your sphere of influence?  Immanuel.  Get with them.  Come up from under and unburden their soul.  

The Son of David wore human shoes, ate with human hands, spoke in the language of a human tongue.  The Son of David was not satisfied to hover over our misery, to observe us from an unfamiliar place.  The Son of David had to experience, for Himself, our humanity in every way.  God with us.  His pity was born of His honest knowledge.  The Son of David knew Himself.  He realized His own need for Divine Mercy as His eyes fell on the condition and position of two blind men.  Immanuel became one of us and carried our load.  He got with us.