God With Us

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 

… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” John 1:1, 4, 14

Photo by Jun on Unsplash

I tend to have a difficult time with the thought of Immanuel, “God with us.” Maybe you do too. Because sometimes, it feels like God is not with us. Sometimes it feels like our suffering is too great, our pain is too overwhelming, our circumstances are too much out of our control. 

And sometimes, it feels like we’ve been left, all alone. 

What I needed to tell myself this week, what God wanted to freshly remind me of, is that, no, I’m not alone. That we are not alone.

It can be so easy to be overwhelmed by the suffering and unknown around us. And then, every year, we come to the season of Advent. Advent means “waiting” and is a season where we honor the searching and waiting that took place right before the world received the baby that would save it. 

But here’s what I think we often miss. The time around Jesus’ birth was not a quiet waiting.

Mary was 9 months pregnant. If you know that feeling, you know it’s full of aches and pains, exhaustion and anxiety and overwhelm. The epitome of feeling out of control.

Not only was she due any day, she was traveling away from her home and family, and she had nowhere to have this baby except a dirt floor. We all know birth is not quiet. It’s chaotic and gritty, and Jesus’ birth would’ve been even more so in their circumstances.

Then, very soon after, because of King Herod’s jealousy, Mary and Joseph and their infant son are told by an angel to flee immediately to Egypt—300 miles away—as refugees literally running for their lives. There is death, fear, loss, chaos … as soon as Jesus enters the world! 

Jesus’ birth wasn’t a magic pill to end this chaos … it was a very deliberate choice for God to enter into it. A choice to enter into all that terror and chaos and say, “I am here with you.” 

I don’t understand suffering. I don’t. And no amount of biblical platitudes will help us truly understand the reason behind the world’s suffering or our own. 

But what I do know is God is asking me to have faith. Faith in what I cannot make heads or tails of. Faith in what he says is true. 

He welcomes my searching, my anxiety, my suffering and my doubt, because he is God With Us. Do my problems magically go away? Does my anxiety always immediately cease? No. But we have is greater. We have a God, a Savior, a Comforter and a Friend, who says I’m Here. I haven’t left you. You don’t understand and that’s okay. I walked this road first by choice so that you don’t have to do it alone. 

God is asking us to have faith that Jesus is Immanuel — God with us. He’s here and he’s working. Even when we can’t see or feel it. It takes faith. 

In the same way Jesus chose to enter into this gritty, chaotic suffering world, we have to choose to lay down our searching, control, fear, and anxiety—every day choosing something better—that He has already come.

Our Redeemer. Our Immanuel The One Who is With Us. 

Reflections/Application:

• What have I been feeling anxious about recently?

• What feels completely out of my control?

• What can I imagine Mary felt like around Jesus’ birth and early life?

• What do I know about God to be true because he chose to enter the world, living through chaos and suffering instead of immediately ending it?

• What is one small way I can choose to trust God today — with my overwhelm, my anxieties, my grief.

Prayer: 

Jesus, no matter who reads these words today, you know their suffering. You know their grief and their anxieties in a world full of chaos and overwhelm. You also know intimately their heart and love them, even in the midst of their own doubt and questions. I pray your Holy Spirit would fill those who read this with comfort and that you would provide an overwhelming sense of being “God With Us” to their heart and mind. I pray you would still the anxious thoughts, calm the racing pulse, and ease the tension and burden as you promise to in your Word. Thank you for being Immanuel and for choosing to enter into this messy, sinful world with us so that we might not be alone. Amen.

— Whitney