God With Us

God comes to us disguised as our life (Source unknown).

 

A theist is one who believes that God is "up there" or "out there," perhaps identified with the forces of nature.  A Christian is one who believes in a God "down here," with us, a God with His feet planted firmly on our earth and present in our lives (paraphrased from a passage in Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality by Richard Rohr.)

 

Because we read Isaiah in hindsight, after the fulfillment of his prophecy, we see nothing remarkable in his words.  But this morning, I realized that Isaiah was speaking 700 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, and yet, he had the audacity to say that the child born to us would be called "Mighty God."  Wow!  That took some nerve! 

 

Seven hundred years before Christ, God indeed had already manifested Himself as 'going with' the Israelites on their journeys and as 'being with' them in their daily lives.  He had accompanied them out of Egypt and through the desert.  He had defeated their enemies and had settled them in the Promised Land, and He sent prophets to instruct the people and to interpret His word for them.  He had told Moses that He Himself would go with them, but that they would not see His face.

 

But "a son born to us" and called "Mighty God"?  Who could conceive of such a thing before it actually happened?  If God wanted us to live a godly life, He was first willing to live a fully human life.  Our goal is not to "reach heaven" as much as it is to "live heaven while on earth"  -- and the only way to do that is to live in union with God Himself through His Spirit.  This is what Jesus did on earth.  But He did not stop with just living in union with the Father, as a role-model; through His "new birth" of the Resurrection, He is able to dwell in us, to accomplish in us all that the Father wills for us.

 

It took the apostles some years of being with Jesus, and even then, not until after His death and resurrection to slowly come to the conclusion that Jesus is "Mighty God."  Thomas fell to his knees and said, "My Lord and My God!" when he encountered the Risen Christ.  Peter knew ahead of time, but faltered, while the others seemed to have doubted until the Resurrection and subsequent appearances:  I am with you always, even to the consummation of the world.

 

The incarnation means that God is with us, now, not "up there" or "out there."  He is here, disguised as our life: in our comings and our goings, in our meetings and our conversations, in our homes and around our tables, in sickness and in health, in riches and in poverty -- the ultimate union of God and man.  He could not wait until heaven to spend time with us; like a passionate lover, He had to join us in our human existence and dwell among us.

 

Anyone who reads the Bible or who listens to the Word of God proclaimed by the prophets will be comforted by His desire, announced from the very beginning, to be with us.  Adam and Eve were never afraid of the Divine Presence until they had sinned and had become ashamed of their nakedness.  But even then, the Divine Seamstress sewed together animal skins to cover their nakedness so they would not be ashamed to stand in His Presence.  Sinful though they were, He still wanted to be with them.  With Jesus now as the "covering" for our nakedness, there is no longer any reason to be afraid of the Divine Presence, any more than Jesus was afraid to be with His Father while He walked the earth.  In Him, we are fully acceptable to God, even though we are still sinful and weak.  We now live the Resurrected Life, the life of union with God, even while in the flesh:  I no longer call you servants, but friends, because servants do not know what the master is doing.

 

What a revelation!  If only we could really believe it!