Emmanuel, Light Of The Darkness

I have re-read the story a couple of times this year, searching for something new, some overlooked detail that hadn't captured my attention before. 

A couple of years ago, my eyes landed on the verse: 
  
"the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the young child lay." 
  
I had always pictured a massive bright star, stationed precisely over the stable, a gleaming arrow pointing to the baby below. But the star was moving? Carefully guiding the wise men each step of their journey? As they stepped closer towards it, the star then beckoned them a little farther? The destination was not revealed to them in a detailed map at the beginning of their journey?

  
But this year, no new revelations have jumped out at me. I yearned to catch a fresh glimpse of the Christmas story, sure that my mind could never grasp all its mystery and divinity. But instead, it has appeared to me as a nostalgic old friend, carefully concealing some of its celestial, hallowed secrets from my thirsting mind.
   
So I turn again to one of my favorite verses at Christmastime: "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned." (Isaiah 9:2) I can't read that verse without feeling the initial stirrings of hope in my heart, an indescribable anticipation rising within me. 

"The people walking in darkness...." I think that describes all of us. I think that is why I relate to this passage. We have all felt the heaviness of darkness, its burdensome weight on our hearts, its inner night of despair and hopelessness that seems to never end, those times when we feel devoid of hope unless some miraculous light breaks through our bleak night of hopelessness.
  
"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light." I've had those bleak days, weeks, months, and even years when I thought the blackness would never lift. Yet suddenly---or often  gradually---or when I thought it was no longer possible, I saw a great light. A light that dissipated the heartaches I thought I would carry forever, a light that whispered 'you are loved' when 'loved' felt like the last description for me, a light that assured me I still played a vital role in his story, and his plans for me were not yet complete.

Emmanuel. 

This may be my favorite name for Jesus. God with us. God with us in our homes. God with us on our jobs. God with us in our church, our community, in our darkest nightmares and deepest joys. God with us in our loneliness and our abundance, in our questions and confidence. God with us in our singleness and our marriages. God with us, not giving up on us, when we have given up on ourselves.

I wasn't able to uncover any new perspective from the Christmas story this year, but I was reminded of what I sometimes forget:

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. 
Our Savior, 
our Rescuer, 
our Deliver, 
Redeemer and Hope Giver----
our Emmanuel----

Has Come.

And none of our darkness can overpower his light.