Christmas 2013 :And you shall call him Emmanuel

Emmanuel - God with us. 

I guess you probably expected me to post again on the 23rd and I did expect to post but someone needed me and I was the only person close enough to help her. So you would be right I had intended the three days leading up to christmas but well a friend in need is more important than anything on a computer- sorry but to me it is. I count my real friends not my face book friends. So I think this post will be posted Christmas eve and the third  perhaps on boxing day. 

God is with, in and for us. This year I heard a theologian speak these words at the beginning of this year in London. ( Or at least I think they were these words) because God seems to have a bad rap sheet. and he ( an american preacher with his own specifically nuanced theology) I even read the book to go with it. but whether or not you agree with him theologically on any points at all as a christian or a non christian the fact still remains that God is with us, Emmanuel the person of Christ Jesus if god is all powerful and all present then it would make sense to say he is around us. But being present is not the same as being with someone as any  person who has ever felt the pang of unrequited love would tell you. 

God being with us isn't just about him showing up but its about him wanting relationship with us. Regardless of whether or not you are a Christian God persues you ( not I might add in a stalkerish or weird way) he loves us each so much he wants us to know him and to speak to him about stuff. Someone I met recently said to me ' I am not like you Allie I haven't got God to talk to about the S that happens in my life'  it jarred with me  because the truth was he had. God was with him through it all, God still is desperately seeking to be in relationship with him as he has been every day since he was born.Thing is my friend he just can't see it- he doesn't notice.

I like to think about being in relationship with God is like going on a long walk with others cross country. I am a keen hiker and I love to be out - not in the rain mind- walking. The thing is when you go on these walks if you go with friends or family you talk along the way you build relationship. God is with us on our life walk, sometimes we are silent and listen to him ( like when we read his word or seek his face) sometimes he is silent and we talk and sometimes we are both silent. But in our culture its like many people are listening to their music or watching stuff on their phone as they walk through life and just don't notice him and he loves them way too much to like tap them on the shoulder and say ' hey I am walking with you.'. If you know anything about rambling or hiking you know that well its a sociable thing. how can you see the beauty that surrounds you if you are on your phone or whatever how can you enjoy it. How can you see the dangers. how can you know where you are going. So maybe it is a long winded slightly tenuous analogy but God walks with us whether we choose it or not and he is the one with the map and the compass! 


  God with us is a promise Emmanuel is spoken about because Jesus is alive now on the cusp of 2014 as much as he was in 6BC when Mary gave birth... and even before that. Moreover, God isn't with us just because he is in us, he was with us before we chose him. In my last post I spoke about the prophets this is what it says about God with us in the person of Jesus. 

The propehcy
Isiaiah 9: And you shall call his name... Emmanuel god with us. 
Zecariah 2:10-13
 10 “Shout and be glad, Daughter Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you,” declares the Lord. 11 “Many nations will be joined with the Lord in that day and will become my people. I will live among you and you will know that theLord Almighty has sent me to you. 12 The Lord will inherit Judah as his portion in the holy land and will again choose Jerusalem. 13 Be still before the Lord, all mankind, because he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.” (NIV)

This year I have really noticed the word Emmanuel, its really hit me God is with us. not just  in the birth and person of jesus although that is important but god is with us its not just about the fact that God is in us because God is with us he chose to make us ( this' us' means those who have chosen to be his children) living vessels of his presence. Where I go God goes not just because he is in me' Christ in me the hope of Glory...' ' you are a temple of the Holy Spirit.'. but because he is with me. I have often when re living and remembering difficult moment in my life imagined Jesus in the memory. Having my friend there with me makes it less horrible helps the healing because he was there in the good moments and the bad. 

Its kind of crazy if you think about it  that the God who made the universe " he made the stars also" kind of God that each star in space was worth noting down as an aside in the creation narrative he breathed would want to share each of our tiny and momentary existences with us is kind of breath-taking. God who spoke and there was life would want to speak to us, walk with us, is remarkable really. God with us, Emmanuel, is kind of breathtaking. 

God is not with me just when I lay hands on the sick and pray in Jesus name that they be well or when I speak a word of truth over someone. he is with me when I'm in the shower or stocking shelves at the shop where I work. God is with me always. Its my choice whether I include him in what I do or not.

Perhaps there is one question on your lips why? why is God with us? I have prayed about it and of course there are many reasons but I think its because he wants to be with us, he wants to be in us and he wants to be for us.  That is quite shocking until you realise God is love and our god the name above all names is a relational God  one who designed us in Eden to ' walk with him in the cool of the day' 

May you know God with you today and always

Christmas 2013: A Christ foretold.

I am currently doing an internhsip program/ discipleship year and working part time in an amazing shop. I realise I haven't posted in a while which is kind of stupid because last week we did a spiritual gifts inventory and two of my top scores were artisan and writer. Which has made it rather obvious to me that I have not painted nor written  in some time which is denying what god has placed within me... 

Therefore I am going to be blogging over the next few days on the things that God has challenged me on this Christmas:

A Christ foretold ( the prophetic surrounding christ's life as the turning point of human history)

And he shall be called Emmanuel - God with us.( the amazing truth of a God whom dwelt amonst us and is with, for and in us.)

Mary's Boy Child - how our culture seeks to keep Jesus as a baby.

and maybe something else if God challenges me more...

A Christ Foretold

As someone who would call themselves, if anything, a Historian with a BA(hons) to prove it. The fact that hundreds ( arguably thousands) of years before that bethlehem night  so many of God's prophets ( God's mouthpieces) were proclaiming almost every aspect of Christ Jesus' birth is astounding to me ( notably the only thing missing was the date unless of course you count Daniel's gold head Dan 8-9). Not because it isn't in God's power to do so but that God would. Think about it, of course God knew as he knows the date, time,circumstance and place of all births ( lives and deaths ) in creation. But that he bothered to share something so great with his children, even if they didn't understand it, astounds me. If nothing else in the bible (and believe me a lot does) tell you that God cares about people that he told his people that hope was coming is kind of crazy. Sure some of the prophecies are nothing if a little tenuous if you don't know much about Jesus life and ministry or you have read Jesus life and ministry with your own agenda ( Isaiah 61- if you are reading the prosperity gospel will make no sense!) 

There is no point in human history that has been spoken more about (before during and after) than Jesus life thirty three years that changed everything. None, not even the year 2000, space travel or tv remakes of the medieval period. 

We live in the post modern era where truth is relative and well everyone's opinion is well, equally valid and if you are vehement about any truth it is seen as a negative thing that you are imposing your opinion on others ( and as all opinions are equal well that isn't the done thing).  The truth is that we  don't get it. the whole prophesyed king part, firstly because there is on the whole exponentially less historical evidence as you get further back in history ie we have lots of sources from the twentieth century but very few from say the sixth Century BCE.  This means that we tend to see history in larger blocks the further we go back. The prophet Isaiah spoke around 700 years before the birth of jesus (Isaiah 9 amongst others) we don't think about it as that long and even the prophet Daniel was proclaiming 400 years before. its like Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s talking about methodist Wesley or Martin Luther ( the german reformer) discussing Justin Welby or pope Francis or proclaiming the birth of Prince George. Obviously Jesus ministry is more important than all of these combined and they themselves would agree with that except prince G who can't speak yet being as he is 6 months old... but still we don't think about it like that as it is all in such distant past we don't count it. Now there are some things about your life and ministry that you can control but there is no way Jesus could have controlled the cirmstances around his birth... I mean come on - no one chooses where they are born or that their mum was 'knocked up' by the holy spirit. 


So why would God do it? why would God give us all the clues... well in a way it is obvious so we knew that there was no denying this was him. The long awaited messiah. That his life was the pinnacle of human history. It kind of makes it undenable - beyond post modernist reasoning beyond relative truth one life stands the most foretold and the odds of him fulfilling every single prophecy that is billions to one possibility of happening (which is crazier odds than it being a white Christmas every year for a decade!) therefore it has to be of God.

... the people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light ( I am the light of the world)....a virgin shall concieve and bear a son ( how can this be since I am a virgin)... out of you bethlehem a future ruler will come from you (so joseph went from nazereth to the town of bethlehem in Judea)... a shepherd to his people ( I am the good shepherd).... the house and line of david ( david begot... joseph)... I will remove this land's sin on a single day ( Christ died for us so that we should not perish but have eternal life)....

There are hundreds of them literally. The mesmerising truth that God loved us so much he put a big pointing arrow throughout all of scripture... look here is my son with whom I am well pleased ( Yep God is down with the street lingo). He died to reconcile us back into the heart of God and that my friends is the true Christmas miracle.