God reaches down to us

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us" (Matthew 1:22-23).

There once was a psychiatrist working in a mental ward who wanted to try out a new way of helping his patients. His idea was to live for a while among those patients, to be with them day and night for an extended period of time. And so he moved in behind the locked door, set up his bed in the ward, and lived the routine of the mental patients day after day. Their schedule became his schedule. Their environment became his environment. He experienced the food and the noise and the smells and everything else that they experienced all the time. He was there to help them with their medicine. He would always be around in the midst of their confusion to give a reassuring smile; even the most unpleasant person in the ward experienced his warm embrace. And in many cases he literally loved those mental patients back into reality and helped them to find meaning for their lives. Down on their level, he was able to raise them up to wholeness and give them a new start.

This is exactly what our "Immanuel" did for us. Two thousand years ago, He "moved in with us" here on earth and lived with us day in and day out. The challenges we face in keeping fed and clothed and housed became His challenges. The pressures we feel to keep our mouths shut and just accept things as they are were pressures that He experienced as well. Just like us, He faced the temptation to be arrogant instead of humble, lazy instead of busy, hateful instead of forgiving, greedy instead of generous. He experienced many of the ups and downs of life that we go through, including the death of loved ones, rejection by the leaders of popular cliques, and betrayal by His friends. He endured loneliness and abuse, both verbal and physical. He never had much money, and during His years of teaching He was constantly on the road with no permanent place to call home. He knows what it’s like for us because He’s been there. He even went so far as to die, just like we do, and then He rose from the dead so that He could love us back into a right relationship with our heavenly Father. He lives to give new meaning to our existence, and to assure us that an even better life awaits us beyond the grave. By coming down to our level, He raised us up to spiritual wholeness and gave us freedom from the mistakes of the past. This is the true gift of Christmas.