After the Anticipation

After the decorations come down and the world resumes, Emmanuel is still with us.

The presents have all been opened. Some of them are probably on the way back to the store for an exchange. Discarded wrapping paper is in the dumpster. Some will have already taken down the Christmas tree. Leftovers are in the fridge. And it’s over for another year.

In some cases, it’ll just be over.

It’ll be someone’s last Christmas with a parent, a spouse, an aunt or uncle, or maybe even a child. I’m reminded of Tenille Townes’ song The Last Time. We just never know.

Even so, despite any and all the pain we may endure in this life, the incarnation stays.

Emmanuel means God with us, not God visits us. Guests go home after the celebration. Christ stays. He is the Word incarnate, so he’s with us in his Word. He’s also with us by his Spirit, who leads and guides us. And he’s with us in worship.

But his presence is so much more than that. We couldn’t escape if we tried, as David reminds us in Psalm 139:7–12 (ESV):

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.

Augustine came to the same realization centuries later, confessing, “For whither can I go beyond heaven and earth, that thence my God should come into me, who hath said, I fill the heaven and the earth.”

Even when we wander, even when darkness surrounds us, we are never outside the presence of the God who knows us completely.

That’s both terrifying and calming, isn’t it? Terrifying because he knows all, sees all. Calming because he died for the sin that brings our deepest shame, and nothing in us is hidden from his mercy.

When the Christmas decorations are boxed up and the house goes back to normal again, there is no corner of our life, no depth of grief, and no stretch of darkness where God is not already there, waiting with us.

After the Anticipation

After the decorations come down and the world resumes, Emmanuel is still with us.

The presents have all been opened. Some of them are probably on the way back to the store for an exchange. Discarded wrapping paper is in the dumpster. Some will have already taken down the Christmas tree. Leftovers are in the fridge. And it’s over for another year.

In some cases, it’ll just be over.

It’ll be someone’s last Christmas with a parent, a spouse, an aunt or uncle, or maybe even a child. I’m reminded of Tenille Townes’ song The Last Time. We just never know.

Even so, despite any and all the pain we may endure in this life, the incarnation stays.

Emmanuel means God with us, not God visits us. Guests go home after the celebration. Christ stays. He is the Word incarnate, so he’s with us in his Word. He’s also with us by his Spirit, who leads and guides us. And he’s with us in worship.

But his presence is so much more than that. We couldn’t escape if we tried, as David reminds us in Psalm 139:7–12 (ESV):

Augustine came to the same realization centuries later, confessing, “For whither can I go beyond heaven and earth, that thence my God should come into me, who hath said, I fill the heaven and the earth.”

Even when we wander, even when darkness surrounds us, we are never outside the presence of the God who knows us completely.

That’s both terrifying and calming, isn’t it? Terrifying because he knows all, sees all. Calming because he died for the sin that brings our deepest shame, and nothing in us is hidden from his mercy.

When the Christmas decorations are boxed up and the house goes back to normal again, there is no corner of our life, no depth of grief, and no stretch of darkness where God is not already there, waiting with us.

In Anticipation

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