God with us

I have litterally written and deleted and then rewritten this blog at least three or four times in the last hour. There is something so holy, and so profound about Christmas that I cannot find the words to express it. I cannot find the "angle" to approach it. There are just a few things that I need to say. Immanuel, means God with us. I will never experience that name for Christ in the same way again after this year in Israel. I have now seen the fish swimming in the sea of Galillee, walked up on the hills where he preached. I have been to Gethsemane where he prayed and cried out to God, I have sat in a 2000 year old dungeon like the one he sat in on the night of his arrest. I have walked on the Mt. of Olives, I have brushed my fingers over the Jordan, where he was baptized. In all the glitz and glam that surrounds Christ in this city, with the churches and the souvenir shops, this is the place where he lived and breathed. There is no getting around that. There are many "supposed" sites for his life and ministry but the point remains that He was WITH US. He is more real to me than he has ever been. Some days this is almost too much to bear. That God did indeed live among us and then die, for us.

Tonight on Christmas Eve, my family did not go to Bethlehem. We drove through Bethlehem, though crowded and noisy streets, resembling Times Square on New Years Eve, or the French Quarter for Mardi Gras. And we went to Beit Sahour, to a quiet field overlooking Bethlehem. A field that may well have been where the "shepherds were watching their flocks by night." And we sang with a small group of Palestinian Christians and their friends and family. We sang songs about those shepherds, and the angels who appeared to them. We sang songs about the baby born, and about the hopes and fears of all the world being met in Him, in Bethlehem. We sang about the Immanuel, the God who is with us.

We stood around a fire pit, with the stars appearing one by one as the sky got darker. The moon was full tonight and cast a bright light on the city. To be honest I didn't sing much, for the lump that was in my throat. But as we left that place I had a song stuck in my head. "Rejoice, rejoice! Immanuel has come to thee oh Israel!" I wish I could come up with more to say, that I could be more profound. But I can barely get out words - Christ has been given flesh and blood for me here in Israel. When I say "rejoice...he has come!" I believe it with a depth that I never did before. I rejoice and yet I weep - the God of the Universe becoming Immanuel is almost too much to get my mind and my heart around. I finish this with a line from my favorite Christmas song... "fall on your knees, and hear the angel voices. Oh night divine! Oh night divine!"

Checkout more thoughts on this night from Ryan at What's Wrong With the World.