Today my heart is weighted by the symptoms of a diseased people. Evil has polluted the places we thought to be immune to danger. Fear-crazed and sin-enamored brokeness has spread and hurt us all deeply. Despite our attempts at control, we cannot escape the painful realization that we are a people insisting on destroying ourselves.
Then I think of Emmanuel. God with us. I think of the deep love that drove a Creator to send His purest posession into the muck of sin because he knew that even mankind's best attempts to reach up to Him for help would fall short. He did not wait for His people to acknowlege their need and cry out to Him. Immersed in mortality, tempted by darkness, burdened by brokeness. He was with us in flesh. He is with us even still.
Can you hear it? The aching groans. The deep longings echoed by many. The earth and those who inhabit it are yearning. Because whether or not they know what they ache for, they know that all is not as it should be.
O come, O come, Emmanuel.
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And deaths' dark shadows put to flight!
Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
Free thine own from Satan's tyranny
From depths of Hell Thy people save
And give them victory o'er the grave.
Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
What is hope? Hope is Emmanuel. The One who came to us. The One who remains with us. The One who will return with power to redeem and restore. All will be made right.
Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come.
