Immanuel, God with Us

For much of my life, Christmas was simply the prelude to Easter.  What good is a Christmas service or prayer that doesn't mention the upcoming death of Jesus?  I always thought the whole point of His being born was to die for our sins..."He lived to die", right?

Last night, Christmas night, our family was joined by a family who has recently arrived in America from a refugee camp in Kenya.  He is from war torn Congo, where in one evening a group searching after his father who had already escaped, burst into their home, brutally attacked him and his brothers and then raped his sisters in front of them.  They all survived this attack and fled in different directions out of this country.  He ended up in Kenya where he met his wife, a refugee from Sudan where she had been an orphan since the age of 4.  The refugee camp itself was filled with threats, expectations of bribery and middle of the night attacks on homes that may have promising resources or people who have for any small reason fallen out of favor with the attackers.

The family we ate dinner with last night, formed in a refugee camp where even their own native people rejected them for marrying someone from a different tribe, have believed the God of the Bible to be their God and they His people since long before the tragdies and suffering of the past ten years.  But has their only benefit of this faith been a confidence that if they should be killed by opposing tribes they will then be with God?  When their home in the refugee camp was robbed of all their possessions, was it ok because of a future hope of life after death?  What good is eternal life in the moment when you are helplessly watching your own sisters brutally ravaged as you cling to your own life?  Its good news that death is not to be feared, of course, but what about the fearfulness of life?  This is the wall my faith kept hitting when my Christian life only understood Easter and not Christmas. 

I hope to never know the terror of those who live in war torn countries, but life outside of those is no perpetual garden either.  How about dearly loved ones in war torn marriages, where they watch helplessly as their own future dreams are robbed in the middle of the night?  The aging process can be ravaging to whole families as its crippling effects steal life from not only the primary victim but all those who love her or him.  Mental illness is in some ways the worst kind of warfare because it attacks and hides as well as the plotting terrorist in mountain caves, at times reigning with terror over the one in its grasp.  Then there are those lesser but still wearisome assaults of daily demands and deadlines that sometimes wake us in the middle of the night, stealing both our sleep and sanity.  I look forward to life after death, but what about life during life?

Yet our new African friends did not lose their faith, even when shaken.  In fact, having been stripped of everything but their marriage and precious 3-year-old son, their confidence in God is stronger and more developed.

Immanuel, God with us.

Perhaps Christmas is more than just the prelude to Easter.
Perhaps the living of Jesus was just as important to our living as His dying is for our death.

God is not just for us, cheering us on until we one day get to be with Him.  He is not merely hopeful we will survive this broken world until we can arrive safely "home".  He has made His home in us that we may be at home in Him.  While Adam's disobedience seaparated us all from God, the perfect obedience and fulfillment of the Law by Jesus joined us all to God in a way that we can never separate.  We who are both victims and victimizers, from every tribe, tongue and nation, have been called one in Him because of His life in us.

As a matter of fact, the most repeated instruction in the entire Bible is some form of "do not fear" and the reason given in almost every instance is because God is with you.  My confidence comes not in my efforts but in His accomplishments.  I do not fear the wickedness "out there" and I do not fear the wickedness that dwells within my own heart because I have not been left alone to change it myself, defeat it myself, nor overcome it myself.  In His life I now live and move and have my being.
Merry Christmas indeed!