Season's Greetings

Behold, the Virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which translated means,
"God with us."

It's been over a year since I signed up for this site and I'm finally getting around to making an entry. Hope that you had a merry Christmas, though. It made a rather sudden appearance in our household this year. Things have been busy around here and, honestly, I didn't devote much time to reflecting on the significance of Christmas. But I'm trying to make up for it.

The purpose of celebrating a holiday, it seems to me, lies in the celebration's unique ability to focus our attention on something that is true all the time. If it's just a "once-a-year" thing, then what's the point? If I'm a jerk to my wife for most of the year, but do something nice and romantic for her on February 14th, I don't become a nice, romantic husband who treats her like a queen and she certainly won't feel like one. That's why a "holiday" like Valentine's isn't very significant, in my mind...but I digress.

We celebrate Christmas because, when the world needed it most, God proclaimed that He had cast His lot with us. Not just for a time, but for eternity. He could have left us to fend for ourselves, to somehow make sense of a terrifying existence without Him, and then to face the consequences of our sin alone. He could have, but He didn't. We know how the rest of the story goes...

His name is called Immanuel. He is "God with us." Not just at the time of His birth, but through the whole of His life unto His suffering death, and on to all of the days of my life. My savior's name is "Immanuel". That's worthy of my celebration...everyday of the year.