Immanuel. God with us (Matthew 1:23).
Jesus is God with us. His birth brought God near to us. A holy God shook hands with sinners, visited their homes and ate with them.
He attended weddings as well as funerals. He blessed weddings with his abundance and disrupted funerals with life-gifting power.
He was a doctor at times. Once he ran a catering service on loaned food of a single boy. At other times he compelled furious nature to bow down to his authority. Demonic powers trembled in his presence acknowledging him as the Son of God.
He did honest hard work as a carpenter and earned his bread through toil and sweat. He knew rejection, misunderstanding, hatred, and opposition. His foremost disciple denied knowing him, one in his close circle betrayed him, and all his followers ran away in his greatest hour of difficulty.
He was hungry. He was thirsty. He slept when tired. He wept. He was angry with wrong religious practices. He spoke against hypocrites. He taught much about money, paying taxes, and investing for eternity.
God with us is no fancy make-belief. He stood along with sinners in his baptism. He was tempted but broke the devil’s attacks with God’s Word. Showed us how to depend fully on God through the indwelling of God’s Spirit and spending time alone with God in agonising prayer.
Finally, when his blood flowed on the cross, the world knew the Son of God truly shared in our humanity (Hebrews 2:14–18). Even there care for his mother was not forgotten nor did he forget to answer the prayer of a dying thief.
What more should he have done to be near you? He came to be not only your LORD and Saviour but to be your friend as well. If God is still not near you even after years of being a Christian, something is wrong your side; isn’t it?
—