Day 3227 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 7:14 NIV

God with us.

Written at God's design some 500-700 years before its fulfillment, a promise proving that God not only knows what He's doing but that nothing we do can undo what He's begun. Yet it's somewhat a funny thing this trying to contemplate time in regard to Scriptural writings, an undertaking clearly taken only in an effort for us to better understand what maybe isn't ours to understand.

Because, as the number of years between this promise being written and the birth of Christ culminating the conception is debated, such just shows that we down here will happily miss the point in preference of the proof.

I didn't set out to stumble upon the discrepancy between opinions in regard to how early this verse was written before Jesus came to seal it, but having read a bit about the different ideas, it only speaks unneeded life to the unnecessary trees we plant in this path of faith, failing instead to simply appreciate the woods of refuge it affords from the hustle of normal life's hassle.

I'll sadly have to admit that this Christmas season's found me more Grinch than grateful. Not sure why, and though I've my ideas, the lot of them simply amass to a mind set to miss the message for sake of the celebration. Not even sure if that makes sense, but I can't help but fear that we're making so much of what's already so much more than enough that we're on the cusp of careening over a cliff into some sort of chaos we’ve crafted that's simply never been the point of His creating such a miracle as what we celebrate this time of the year.

It’s that He found us in our mess, a Shepherd so serious about His message of salvation that He lived to laid down His life in order to turn our mess into a message that testifies to the triumph He won over our failure to do anything but lose sight of the fact that His message was spoken through a Word that was with God, a Word that is from God, a Word that is God that speaks to the impossible fact that so too can we again now become God’s own creation, created to do good works unto the glory of the Father who gives us daily such opportunity to praise Him inside all we do and all we say and all we become on this side of His light shining into our darkness

And so it's not the gifts we buy nor the money with which we strive to afford them. It isn't songs played ad nauseam, so well known that for many all they inspire is boredom building upon indignation. The season isn’t supposed to be marked by nor meant for shopping nor this endless time we give only to be filled with traffic clogging up the purpose found instead only along a barren road aimed into the wilderness.

Because we've already the gift. Needn't run nor rush to find some last second spectacle that we assume adds some season to the season. Banquets and buffets lined with more food than any know with what to do doesn't prove better the bounty of His benevolence any more than simply enjoying for a moment the mundane we normally miss behind its being taken for granted every other day of the year.

So much of Christmas has become this lavish holiday shopping season in which we spend ourselves and our savings trying to stop and show someone that we love them for once. And always now bouncing and balancing our bonds with one another on bank accounts and budgets, we're running low on choirs chiming to the tune of an old-time hymn sung happily without car horns cutting in nor our being cut off in traffic insisting upon only ruining the moment. Yes, we're losing the reason in the moment, all because that's all we've become.

A people amassing individual moments, trying only later to make them into a life we can say we lived while never choosing the humility that allowed us able to near the Father who gave even the ones we ignored or took for granted, meaning each to mean something.

Yes, I fear we're forgetting the mercy held within each moment, each misery, each mundanity so normal that we can't even see the beauty in them anymore. Something like a rainy day ruining the parades we’d planned to otherwise suffice for a celebration. Or something like a simple conversation had with someone whose words we want to hear so closely that we dare lay down the phones that speak us to us the rest of the day. Or perhaps even something like a star shining in the sky, a display of delight now hidden by city lights and deadlines.

Always in a hurry, always running behind, too short on time to stop and see, stop and listen, stop and learn to love the moments we're given. Alas, looking around and seeing what's going on that seems anymore to only have us going under, I can't help but feel that we're missing Him in more moments than we can imagine.

Yet we're the ones with the least reason to do so.

This verse is the very first aimed at the coming of something that nobody ever heard of before. It was the first proof of a promise not to be proven true for some centuries still. The very first time a name, the Name was recorded in Scripture. Written for and read among a people who'd not know Him, not find Him, not see Him nor hear Him nor therefore ever possibly hope to know Him within their lifetimes. A promise given to a people whose children's, children's, children's children wouldn't even be alive to see.

A promise given that proves us the blessed ones to have been born after His birth.

And yet we're the ones who still find reason in this season, in every season to struggle to see. So blind we can't, not anymore, not that we ever could. Because faith is a choice, much the same as it was to them back then, so too for us today is it something which demands we believe. But to believe demands a humility that costs us every ounce of everything we've known, everything we've been.

Pride laid aside, assumption assumed loss going forward, entitlement not even offered life-support. No, His coming means the going of all that we've had going on that's kept us so busy, so blinded that we know only to live going against Him. It's a gift that we should be honored to accept, so honored that we appreciate that to accept it, to accept Him is to change here so much that it never again seems a home we care to keep.

Because behind the price tags and paranoia, aren't we forgetting the pricelessness of the price He came only to pay? Are we not losing sight of His light lit forever, now only flickering faintly behind sale signs and lines waiting on airlines? Are we perhaps misplacing the Messiah while we instead make a mess of ourselves assuming this season is something saved for us trying to hold ourselves together so that we ensure it comes out right for all we're trying to please through all we feel obligated to do?

Who is He to us? This coming King, who's already been and gone and is now waiting to come once more to fulfill yet another promise He made? Is He is someone that a single season will suffice to celebrate? Is the Christ a King only at Christmas? Is His mercy made for only momentary merriment? Can we truly confine Him to clanging bells and last-second deals?

Who is He to us, we who've been given this opportunity of having been born after He's already gone to prepare our next stay? And thus, knowing His reason, the reason of this season, do we have any idea as to the home He holds in wait for those who can't wait to see Him? Can't wait to praise Him? Can't wait to find Him in deeper measure within the next minute which we hope will only pale prayerfully to that which comes after?

Indeed, are we seeking Him with as much fervor and faithfulness as He showed in how He came to seek for us?

That's what we have in Jesus. It's not some hope that means something more when wrapped inside a holiday that many celebrate only begrudgingly. It's not an idea that seems an ideal so idealistic that one's assumed sadistic for actually believing in it while in this world that believes belief a children’s luxury. But see, that’s itself a part of this impossible gift: We don't need the world to agree to let us celebrate. We don't need tiny trinkets or toys to carry the joy of Him and the gift He is.

We don’t need anyone to do anything which adds to the joy as such should already have been so overflowing that we dare not consider that we could ever run out.

But that we still sometimes do only proves that what we really need is to simply let Him be the gift He's always been and stop trying to build it into something else, something we assume better as we think it brighter and bigger and thus more beautiful. We can't make this opportunity any more beautiful than He designed it to be before our lives began and we then began to build our own ideas in the way.

If we could get back to the simplicity of our Savior, this season would never lose its spice. If we could hold once more the miracle of His mercy, we wouldn't need to seek reasons nor seasons to be merry. If His love would be allowed to light the way, we wouldn't have to wear ourselves out trying to find one that we can follow perfectly. Indeed, if we'd just let Him be the Way He promised Himself, proved Himself to be, we'd awake every morning as if it were Christmas all over again.

Why? How? Because if we could actually grasp the grace that came to this earth only to take our place, we'd want for nothing else. We'd run toward nothing else. We would seek, serve, share, speak of nothing nor nobody other than Jesus. Simply because we'd finally see that in Him is so much over which to rejoice that days and hours and seasons and celebrations wouldn't really be worth slowing down to try and plan or perfect.

No, we'd just walk by faith, a faith that had us fighting only to know more of Him and help more to know of Him and all He does, all He is, all He gives and just how little He asks in return.

And we'd learn to love offering Him everything we could never imagine He could want or use all because we'd finally see that our Savior is and will always be everything we need.

Always before, kindly beside, boldly behind, leading us so lovingly through this exodus of life we live in this wilderness so rampant with wickedness that it's inspired in us this sadness in which we sadly assume it to be faced mostly alone, mostly on our own, under our own strength, reliant upon our own ability, rife with our own limitations as such.

But no, Immanuel, God with us, bringing a gift to us that we might migrate back from this brink to being beside again He who died that we might be His once more, never again alone, but rather instead sheltered by an authority no human can mime nor even can the grave hold. A love so big that it could only fit in this world for a little while before having to go back home to the Heaven He's called us to hope for, wait for.

So much of this faith and the story which has been breathed for the benefit of our believing it seems entirely so impossible that it'll remain foolish to those who are fading, failing, falling into a fear that lives only afraid of perishing. He came to prove that He wants not that outcome for anyone. And He continues to give all we need to see all we need to know all He is.

This has been God's plan since the beginning. If only we'd come to surrender the sculpting of our own done alongside, on the wrong side, we might again see that this season is one that never ends and that we don't need anything to make it more amazing. His grace has always been the very definition of amazing, it's just amazing we keep missing it, even to the point of feeling forced to celebrate something in a way that seems more calamity than celebratory.

May that be the gift we each give to ourselves this Christmas? The courage to take again the chance to believe in everything He's said as proven fully by everything He's done. Because it was done for all of us, and all He asks from us is that we believe He is enough to be worth letting go of all that isn't.

God with us, a love so immeasurable that maybe we should seek every single day to find out why He chose such a gift to be given to such a people so vastly undeserving that we still find ways to doubt it. Because in the end, what He began is and will always be bigger than either our efforts or the doubts that grow inside their being always insufficient.

No, this day isn’t about what we do but what’s been done for us by a Savior who came to show us how to live by dying for us, a mercy only possible when wrapped within a love so perfect that even arriving among livestock wasn’t enough to shame.

May we never again allow anything to dim His light, because though we sadly think we know something of what life is meant to be, truth is that true life is found only in the hope that is Immanuel.

God with us.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold