This Christmas: I know He's With Me

Well, here we are at post three in my "This Christmas" series. I've been challenged, encouraged and inspired. And I've cried a few tears. After writing only two posts, This Christmas: I Believe God and This Christmas: I'm Taking It Personally, my heart is so much more prepared for the celebration of our Savior's birth. I hope yours has been too.

Let's tiptoe back into Luke's account of the Christmas story, and pick up where we left off.
"In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." Luke 1:26-28



I've been focusing on the word Emmanuel this entire holiday season. Everywhere I turn, it's a name I keep hearing and reading. This past week, I took the kiddos to see "Bethlehem Revisited" at a church here in Conway, Arkansas. It was a beautiful production with actors (church members) that reenacted the time when Jesus was born.

In the recreated town of Bethlehem, one man read from a scroll of Hebrew. He read of the birth of Jesus in authentic Hebrew, even using the intonations of a Jewish priest. It was beautiful. I was transfixed. I enjoyed grabbing onto the words that I could barely make out. Yeshua. David (pronounced Da-veed). And Emmanuel.

Emmanuel. God with us. When the angel Gabriel greeted Mary, the mother of Jesus, he affirmed God's presence in her life. He knew he had some heavy stuff to share with her, so he must have felt the need to remind her that she was not alone. The Lord was with her.

During my intimate time with God this morning, I was reminded that God is with me. Just as He was with Mary. He reminded me that in 2011, over two thousand years after Mary's visit from the angel Gabriel, His presence is very real in my life. Through His Word, He quieted my spirit as I wrestled with the giants in my life. The giant of pursuing a writing career. The giant of preparing for a workshop I'm teaching at church in January. The giant of managing a family, along with being a pastor's wife, a community activist, a journalist, etc. etc.

He quieted my spirit with these words:
"The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." Zephaniah 3:4
God quiets me with his love. When I rant about everything imperfect in my life, He quiets me. When I wonder why life couldn't be a little easier, He quiets me. When I forget that faithful is He who calls who will also do it, He quiets me.

This Christmas, I am a child crying out for comfort, for empathy, for love from my Heavenly Father. And like a loving Daddy, He takes me in His arms, strokes my face with His hand and plants a moist kiss on my cheek. 

And I know He loves me still. I know He is always with me. Emmanuel.

Cradled in His Arms,

Carla

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ambassador: His Rise, Fall and Rise Again

Image
I recently began a Facebook Group called "A Pastor's Wife's Garden" with the goal of connecting hearts with other pastor's wives like myself. The idea for this group came totally from the Lord one day while I watched a recording of an interview on CBN. The topic of this interview: William Branch, also known as The Ambassador, also known as Duce, and his wife discussing the challenge of his emotional affair with another woman. To give a little backstory, Duce is a Christian hip hop artist that co-founded and led Cross Movement, a rap group that took the Christian world by storm in 1996. All original founding members, including Duce, grew up in Philadelphia. Having earned a Masters degree in Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary -- graduating with honors, by the way -- he began co-pastoring Epiphany Fellowship Church, a growing and vibrant multi-ethnic church in Philly. That is, until he fell into this emotional affair. At that point Duce was asked to leav
Read more

Five Things Not to Say to Adoptive Parents

Image
The Hendricks Clan "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."  Did you grow up hearing that adage? I don't think I reached age ten before I realized how false that saying is. The scars of sticks and stones heal with time. The scars of hurtful words? Many of us will take our share of those scars to our graves. If you have adopted, you've heard your share of ill-timed/insensitive questions and comments. Many will come from the lips of perfect strangers. This can be annoying, but in the end, feels rather harmless. Yet sometimes the offenses come from the people closest to us -- parents, grandparents, siblings, long-time friends. Some of those words have left scars on your soul. And maybe on the souls of your child. This post is not only for those of us that have adopted. This post is for our family members, our close friends, our fellow church and community members. This post is for our loved ones who may be very happy for us, b
Read more

The Shooting of Michael Brown: What I Know for Sure

Image
It's been exactly two weeks since Michael Brown , age 18, was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri.  Other than a few discussions at home with my family, I haven't talked much about this volatile situation. I've wanted to share about it here in Deep Waters , but I've wanted to speak intelligently about it. There's just so much I don't know about this case right now. And then I received an email from a sweet sister-friend that told me she'd checked my blog for my reaction to the Ferguson crisis. She encouraged me to "weigh-in" here, and I knew I needed to break my silence. I feel like I did when I wrote about the Trayvon Martin crisis back in May 2012 in "Our Sons Are Trayvon." I feel the way I did when I wrote about the verdict in the Zimmerman trial back in July 2013 in "Zimmerman Found Not Guilty/The Church Found Guilty" . I feel like there's so much I don't know. I wasn
Read more