The Christmas decorations are down, put away and stored in the garage for another year. They emerge sometime after Thanksgiving each year and decorate our homes for a few weeks and then disappear.
Santa, it seems, has left the mall, and returned to the North Pole. The reindeer are back to grazing. The bells are silent. The songs of the holidays have disappeared from the airwaves. Christmas 2022 is behind us, and Christmas 2023 is far ahead. (No matter what people advise I cannot bring myself to shopping for next Christmas in January!)
But one thing has remained the same. One thing has never changed ever since that first Christmas two-thousand years ago. Immanuel, “God With Us.” [Isaiah 7:14]
Each Christmas we are reminded that God entered this world containing Himself in a tiny baby. We celebrate that over the “Holiday Season.” It often seems to be the theme in many messages and church services. But … BUT, let us not forget that “God With Us,” never left us. He is still “With Us.”
When Christ Jesus returned to the Father’s House following His death and resurrection, He sent the Spirit of God to dwell – IN-dwell – us.
Immanuel, “God With Us,” is no longer self-limited to a physical body, but now is present in this world in everyone who has through His grace, by faith, become a “Child of God.”
Santa and Frosty and Rudolph and The Grinch and Elf have left us … but Jesus through the power of His Holy Spirit never has. NEVER WILL.
