Immanuel

Seven hundred years before the birth of the promised Messiah, Isaiah prophesied about a virgin who would “conceive and bear a Son and shall call His name Immanuel” (7:14).

When the St. Matthew referred to Isaiah’s prophecy in 7:14, he reminded his readers of the Hebrew meaning of that name: “God with us.”

In other words, Immanuel was not to be the child’s ‘birth’ name. It was to indicate his ‘nature.’ The prophet used the same literary technique two chapters later, in chapter 9, in which he described Messiah’s NATURE this way: “And His name shall be called, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” 

Immanuel. God is with us. Never to leave us. Here is how the apostle John tells it in the first chapter of his gospel: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

I have never closed my eyes to the brutality that life sometimes throws at us. But I must remind myself, and everyone who asks, God remains with us at all times and in all situations, despite the pound of flesh some of those situations gouge from our hearts. 

God is with us.

He has never left our side in the past, and He will never leave us in the future. Even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

Most of us remember the poem, “Footprints.” I repeat it now because it drives home the point of this message about Immanuel:

One night I dreamed a dream. As I was walking along the beach with my Lord, across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to me and one to my Lord. 

After the last scene of my life flashed before me, I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that at many times along the path of my life, especially at the very lowest and saddest times, there was only one set of footprints.

This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it. "Lord, you said once I decided to follow you, You'd walk with me all the way. But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life, there was only one set of footprints. I don't understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me." 

He whispered, "My precious child, I love you and I never left you. Never, ever. During your trials and tests, when you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I was carrying you."

Immanuel. God with us. Even in the valley. But – if God is with us, then why then does He permit bad things happen to His people, His children? 

When I was 12 or 13 I prayed a nightly prayer as I prepared to go to sleep: “Oh, God, please God. Don’t let anything happen to me, Andrea (my sister), my father or my mother.” Night after night. For two or three years, if my memory is reliable.

 I don’t know how I came up with that prayer, how I formulated it in my pre-adolescent mind, or why I prayed it each night. I never heard my mother pray, other than once a year during Rosh Hashonna when she prayed over the Yahrtzeit candles for her deceased mother.  

"Oh God, please God, don’t let anything happen to me, Andrea, my father or my mother.”

In recent years I’ve wondered what might have happened to my childhood faith if something bad DID happen to me, Andrea, my father, or my mother. As a child who, at the time, thought like a child and reasoned as a child, would I have put aside my childish faith? Would I have been angry at God, thought Him impotent, or uncaring, or absent, for permitting something serious to fall over us? I’ve talked with many people in the last 47 years of my walk with the Savior to whom exactly that had happened. They’d prayed fervently, sometimes day after day for years for a loved one, or for themselves, for good to happen – and the opposite occurred. Death. Divorce. Chronic illness . . . . Most people can come up with their own list of deep sorrows.

Although this is speculation on my part – I like to think if something bad had happened to me, Andrea, my father or my mother, and I laid aside my youthful faith, I like to think that when I became a man I would have recovered from my earlier rejection of God. I like to think I would have grown to know God for who He really is: Not impotent, but All Mighty. Not uncaring, but the very essence of love. Not absent, but always with me, never leaving me, never forsaking me. 

So, I ask it again, why do prayers go unanswered? Why do loved ones – even children – die in accidents, or by illness, or murder, or suicide? Why do once-lovers separate? Where is Immanuel, the God who promises to always be with us – when bad things happen to His children? 

Once upon a time, I thought I knew why. I could cite a dozen reasons and come up with as many scriptures to explain God’s actions or inactions. But now, after so long walking with Jesus, I confess I am no longer sure why He does what He does – or why He does not do what He does not do. 

St. Paul wrote in his 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians. “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, [But] then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

After decades of unanswered prayers – some of them desperate prayers, I now believe the kind of faith in God that abides despite dead loved ones, or divorce, or long and arduous sickness, or any other terrible trial that falls so often over so many of God’s children – I now believe a stick-to-it faith in God is nothing less than a supernatural gift He gives to those who choose to still seek Him, even after terrible and unyielding tragedy, heartbreak and distress.  

We find in Luke’s gospel the Lord speaks to His disciples: “You are those who have stood by Me in My trials.”  But I can't help but think the Lord also turns to you and me and says to us: “You are those who have stood by me in YOUR trials.” 

Not everyone stands by the Lord in their own trials. Many get disillusioned, disappointed, and frustrated with their trials – and they just give up and walk away. You may know people like that. 

I love Job’s comment in the sixth chapter of that book. I suspect you all know the story of Job’s agonizing trials of financial ruin, of the throbbing boils and sores all over his body, and the death of his seven sons and three daughters. 

Feel the man’s utter, shattering grief in the first several verses of chapter 6: “Oh that my grief were actually weighed  and laid in the balances together with my calamity! For then it would be heavier than the sand of the seas; . . . . For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, Their poison my spirit drinks; The terrors of God are arrayed against me . . . .Oh that my request might come to pass, and that God would grant my longing!  “Would that God were willing to crush me, that He would loose His hand and cut me off!” 

But don’t stop reading. Continue one more verse, to verse ten where Job proclaims: “But it is still my consolation, and I rejoice in unsparing pain, That I have not denied the words of the Holy One.”

If the Holy Spirit has taught me anything in the last 47 years of my walk with Immanuel it is this: THAT kind of faith—the faith that says with Job: It is still my consolation, and I rejoice in unsparing pain, that I have not denied my God – that kind of faith is as much a supernatural gift, as is the supernatural gift of being healed of a deadly sickness, or the reconciliation of a shattered marriage, or the resurrection of the dead itself.

It’s the kind of gift that enables us to put childhood thoughts and reasoning behind us and fix adult eyes on things unseen, or unknown – And to simply be content with that. 

I wish I had a better answer for myself, and for those who ask me the often-unanswerable question, “Why do bad things happen to God’s children?” We simply do not fully know the ‘whys’.  We simply know now in part, and only in His presence will we fully know.  

But – and please hear me say this -- In the part that we DO know about Immanuel, we know enough to seek and to find the supernatural strength that will sustain us like Job – or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, or Saints Paul, or Peter, or James, and any of the millions of martyrs who have suffered unspeakable anguish, and yet found supernatural strength to still trust in the God-who-is-with-us and who sustains us.  

For more than 50 years Mother Theresa worked in the slums of Calcutta with orphans and lepers, the diseased and the dying. During her missionary work she wrote letters to her local priest and spiritual advisor. Her letters were published after her death. It is from those letters we learn that Mother Theresa did not sense the presence of God with her for those 50 years. Half a century. Day after day. 

Yet, despite the spiritual loneliness she suffered for those five decades – she persisted in following her Immanuel as best she knew how. For those many years she demonstrated what it is like to be a Christian – to live by FAITH in God’s promises and NOT by feelings. 

Our text today reminds us of the Christmas story.  “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.” 

As we look forward to the celebration of that miraculous birth, I want to reiterate what the Holy Spirit tells us again and again – God is with us. In the light and on the mountaintops, and in the valleys of death and loss and pain and despair. He remains always by our side. He never blinks, and nothing that happens to us or around us takes Him in any way by surprise. 

All He asks of us – all He ever asks of us – is to trust Him. Oh, God – help us to do that better.