She met me at the office door, like usual, with a smile as wide as her face.
This is my normal greeting.
She is beautiful. She is full of life. She is changed.
But, this is a new reality for her.
When God found her, she was bruised, beaten, broken and used. She was a prostitute, walking the streets night after night, alone and empty.
He has redeemed her, pulled her out of a deep desperate pit and has made her new. Miracle kind of stuff.
This particular day she came and sat on my couch silently, but with a look of deep thought.
We were having light conversation about Christmas and what our plans were. I asked her, “What do you want for Christmas?”
She sat still for a second… and then asked me:
“Are you ever going to leave me?”
I answered her, “Never.”
“That’s enough for me. That’s all I could ever ask for,” as she exhaled deeply.
The lines of Christmas have become a bit blurry haven’t they? I’m not saying we don’t know the “reason for the season”, obviously I know that you would answer that it’s all about Jesus.
But what does that even mean? Is Christmas only a celebration of the birth of Jesus?
In my opinion it’s about so much more than that.
What does the birth of Jesus really mean? The obvious answer is that the One who would live and die on the cross, showed up on the scene.
But what did His arrival mean? To the people waiting on Him, at that time, waiting for the Messiah, what did it mean for Him to be born?
His arrival was the long awaited WORD from God. Jesus was The Word made flesh. At that time, there had been a 400 year silence…no words from God…nothing. Can you imagine what that must have felt like…the desperation, the frustration, the loss of hope.
And then, piercing through the silence came the cry of a baby, the exhale of God, His word made flesh.
He planned the platform that He would speak through for the first time in 400 years, and that platform was HIMSELF, in the form of US, laying in a manger.
He chose to speak, not in a high and mighty castle for only the noblest to have access to, but in a manger, on the hay, so that the lowliest in society could make their way to Him.
His word, after so long, spoken in a way that any heart who would prepare Him room could receive.
But His birth was also God’s answer to the long asked question: WHERE ARE YOU?
He was now HERE, Emmanuel, God with us…God with YOU.
No longer dwelling in a temple made by man’s hands, but here, present and speaking.
He was here speaking a promise:
“,,, I will never leave you nor forsake you…” Deut. 31:6
And that promise brings life, it brings hope and peace and comfort.
For that I am adoring Him this season. For that, I am crying out on her behalf, on his behalf, that they know Him this way; that they know Him as Emmanuel… not just at Christmas, but every second of every day.
Ask Him to meet you in your madness this holiday. Be still and wait on Him to speak, to exhale over your life, to remind you that HE IS HERE.
And he whispers a calling over your life, as His child, to be a reminder to a lost and desperate world that He will never leave them… and the best way to portray this is for you to stick with the broken, and when they ask, “Will you ever leave me?” you simply say, “Never.”
Emmanuel. He will never leave us.
This is beautiful